Human Factors: Where people and systems meet
People are as much a part of our railway as the trains and the track, so let’s include them in our systems thinking.
Sarah Shooter Editorial Content Manager, RSSB
Safety and performance aren’t component parts of a railway like stations or track. They are characteristics that emerge from the complex system. We can’t tighten the nuts and bolts on efficiency or turn safety up to eleven—as much as we wish we could. Improving characteristics of the railway system demands a holistic approach. A key part of the railway system is the people that operate it and use it. So when we think about improving safety and performance, we should also be thinking about human factors.
Human factors specialists focus on the interaction between people, technology, systems and processes. They draw on decades of research to guide the design, operation and evaluation of socio-technical systems. This approach helps identify opportunities for improvement and best practice, including goals, incentives, technology interactions, and organisational interfaces.
Applying human factors has already made significant contributions to our industry:
Better training and competence management: Understanding job demands and human performance variability has led to better training programs, improved decision-making, and more effective teamwork.
Policy and strategy development: Human factors teams have supported the deployment of safety frameworks and risk management models, such as the Common Safety Method for Risk Assessment (CSM-RA) and the ORR’s risk management maturity model (RM3).
Human-centred design: Designing safety-critical decision-support systems and bringing mobile technology to frontline staff has improved safety and efficiency in emergency situations.
Safety leadership: Facilitating safety leadership has promoted a culture of openness, learning, and continuous improvement.
Despite past advancements, the railway industry faces new challenges. The adoption of in-cab signalling technology, remote asset management, and automated decision support tools will continue to grow. Also, the industry must navigate significant organisational changes, decreased financial investment, and increased demands on staff and the network. Understanding how our people will affect and be affected by these challenges is paramount.
People will always play a key role in rail safety systems. Therefore, human factors work will always be needed to optimise their interaction with these systems improving roles, workplaces, and organisations. Human factors-led design gets the best from people and technology, leading to high performance, better decision-making, enhanced safety, and efficiency.
The industry must continually learn from both successes and failures. Our specialists are developing resources to help all areas of industry better understand this key part of the system. From accident investigation to non-technical skills, there are so many aspects of rail that can be improved with better understanding of this discipline.
The Human Factors Strategy Group leads this cross-industry collaboration. It includes representatives from a wide range of organisations, including RSSB, the ORR, RAIB, Amey, Eurostar, HS2 and Network Rail. It was set up to help facilitate this work and highlight current and future human factors issues that need addressing.
The Human Factor Strategy Group will publish articles, videos, and interviews on human factors risks and solutions throughout 2025. In the meantime? Explore our existing resources:
Our past and ongoing research projects are in the human factors library, available on SPARK.
How does human factors affect frontline workers? Dig into our special editions of Right Track and RED.
If you’ve got questions, visit our dedicated team’s homepage to learn more. Take me there ❯