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Understanding and Improving Work & Life

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Tag: work

  • safety

Competency and Moral Dilemmas: “What Would You Do?”

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 30/03/202304/04/2023

Sometimes in our working lives, we have to make decisions that involve a kind of…

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  • safety

The Curious Incident of the Runway Incursion in the Night-Time

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 18/03/202320/03/2023

Sometimes after an incident, a system-wide change is implemented that makes work more difficult and creates new problems. This story is one such example, which contains useful lessons for responding to rare events. Steven Shorrock recounts the tale.

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  • Human Factors/Ergonomics

A Desk Is a Dangerous Place From Which to Watch the World

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 06/03/202330/10/2025

This article is a reproduction of an article published in HindSight magazine issue 28 in February 2019 on the…

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  • Human Factors/Ergonomics

Why Learn from Everyday Work?

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 01/03/202327/05/2024

This article is a reproduction of the Editorial published in HindSight magazine issue 31 in December 2020…

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  • Human Factors/Ergonomics

Surprises, Fast and Slow: Preparing for the Limits of Work-as-Imagined

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 30/01/202331/03/2023

This article is a reproduction of the Editorial published in HindSight magazine issue 34 in…

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  • safety

Getting a Handle on Three Zones of Performance

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 30/12/202227/05/2024

Reflections on what distinguishes the three zones of performance in the well-known graph associated with Safety-II.

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  • Human Factors/Ergonomics

Twenty Five Years: Reflections on the Practice of Improving Work

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 06/11/202217/03/2023

In this post, I reflect on what I learned since graduating and have found to be most important to practice in the design and improvement of work.

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  • Culture

Staying In Control: Five Suggestions From a Long-Distance Psychologist on the Centenary of Air Traffic Control

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 20/10/202220/03/2023

On the centenary of air traffic control, and the International day of the air traffic controller, I offer five suggestions that have emerged from my experience of working with air traffic controllers over 25 years of practice as a psychologist. 

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  • safety

On the Spread of Ideas: Four Roles and Four Traps 

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 22/06/202230/10/2025

In this post, I describe four roles for the spread of new ideas, and reflect on corresponding ego traps or shadow roles.

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  • Health and Wellbeing

Navigating the New Reality

  • by Steven Shorrock
  • Posted on 07/05/202204/10/2023

While we sometimes talk about the ‘new normal’, the only thing that is normal is change. So how might we navigate the new reality? The following five practices are important in adjusting and adapting and are supported by research on resilience and growth.

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About the Author

Steven Shorrock is an interdisciplinary humanistic, systems and design practitioner interested in understanding and improving work and life.

Chartered Psychologist (CPsychol) | Chartered Ergonomist and Human Factors Specialist (CErgHF) | BSc (Hons) MSc (Eng) PhD

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Categories

  • safety (122)
  • Human Factors/Ergonomics (95)
  • Systems Thinking (84)
  • Culture (30)
  • Humanistic Psychology (21)

Tags

  • safety (75)
  • human factors (64)
  • Systems Thinking (59)
  • safety-II (51)
  • work-as-done (51)

Year

  • 2026 (142)
  • 2025 (30)
  • 2024 (36)
  • 2023 (107)
  • 2022 (52)

Human Factors & Ergonomics in Practice

'Human Factors & Ergonomics in Practice' concerns the real practice of human factors and ergonomics (HF/E), conveying the perspectives and experiences of practitioners and other stakeholders in a variety of industrial sectors, organisational settings and working contexts. Buy direct from Routledge.

Tags

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Top Posts

  • Reflections on the Autistic Spectrum: A Critical Response to Uta Frith's Views
  • Invisible Worlds: Celtic Folklore for Living with Chronic Conditions and Dynamic Disability
  • The Varieties of Human Work
  • I Crash: Texts from M.E.
  • Mind your Mindset: Safety-I and Safety-II
  • Four Kinds of ‘Human Factors’: 2. Factors of Humans
  • Four Kinds of 'Human Factors': 1. The Human Factor
  • Why Is It Just So Difficult? Barriers to ‘Just Culture’ in the Real World
  • Work and How to Survive It: Lesson 1. Understand ‘How Work Goes'
  • Twenty Five Years: Reflections on the Practice of Improving Work

Archives

    Work-as-done is the work that people actually do, cognitive, verbal and manually. Work-as-judged is the judgement, evaluation or appraisal of work, via other proxies for work-as-done. Work-as-simulated is the work that is imitated or recreated in some way for the purposes of learning, testing, design, research, assessment, or exploration. Work-as-instructed is the explanation and demonstration describing how work is to be conducted or performed; the work that people are taught to do. Work-as-analysed is the process and product of examination, decomposition, categorisation, modelling and representation of work. Work-as-measured is the quantification of aspects of work: the work that is represented through numbers, metrics, indicators, scores, targets, dashboards, and other forms of quantification. Work-as-observed is the observation of the work of others, formally or informally - directly, remotely, live, or recorded - and the interpretation of what is observed by the observer. Work-as-disclosed is the work that people say that they (or others) do or did, either in formal or informal accounts. Work-as-prescribed is the formalisation, specification and design of work. It is the work that people ‘should do’, especially according to policies, procedures, rules, and so on.

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