Human factors in safety is concerned with all those factors that influence people and their behaviour in safety-critical situations. In aviation these are, for example, environmental factors in the cockpit, organisational factors such as shift work, human characteristics such as ability and motivation of staff. Careful consideration of human factors is necessary to improve health and safety at work by optimising the interaction of humans with their technical and social (team, supervisor) work environment. This provides considerable benefits for business by increasing efficiency and by preventing incidents/accidents. The aim of this paper is to suggest management tools for this purpose. Management tools such as balanced scorecards (BSC) are widespread instruments and also well known in aviation organisations. Only a few aviation organisations utilise management tools for human factors although they are the most important conditions in the safety management systems of aviation organisations. One reason for this is that human factors are difficult to measure and therefore also difficult to manage. Studies in other domains, such as workplace health promotion, indicate that BSC-based tools are useful for human factor management. Their mission is to develop a set of indicators that are sensitive to organisational performance and help identify driving forces as well as bottlenecks. Another tool presented in this paper is the Human Resources Performance Model (HPM). HPM facilitates the integrative assessment of human factors programmes on the basis of a systematic performance analysis of the whole system. Cause-effect relationships between system elements are defined in process models in a first step and validated empirically in a second step. Thus, a specific representation of the performance processes is developed, which ranges from individual behaviour to system performance. HPM is more analytic than BSC-based tools because HPM also asks why a certain factor is facilitating or obstructing success. A significant need for research and development is seen here because human factors are of increasing importance for organisational success. This paper suggests integrating human factors in safety management of aviation businesses - a top-ranking partner of technology and finance - and managing it with professional tools. The tools HPM and BSC were identified as potentially useful for this purpose. They were successfully applied in case studies briefly presented in this paper. In terms of specific safety-steering tools in the aviation industry, further elaboration and empirical study is crucial. Statement of Relevance: The importance of human factors is recognised by operators at the sharp end of aviation, where flights are conducted or coordinated. At the blunt end, measurement tools are needed to manage operational resources.

Objective Human resources and health issues are crucial in terms of corporate competitiveness. However, systematic, continuous and strategically aligned occupational safety and health (OSH) management is scarcely applied in companies. One major reason for this could be the lack of generally accepted and standardised OSH control methods. Our objective was thus to conceptualize a method by which qualitative factors such as human resources and OSH aspects contribute to the performance or value-added layer of an organization. Methods We developed a business case based on the well-known and accepted Balanced Scorecard approach, which we adapted and applied to the management of OSH issues. The concept was implemented in the course of a comprehensive case study at a German automobile manufacturer. We gathered health as well as finance data in order to test which health-related indicators had an impact on financial performance. The demonstration of, and reporting on, how the promotion of workplace health contributes strategically to the organization is crucial for both health and human resource managers. Results Based on multivariate regression analyses, our main finding was that the Balanced Scorecard approach is an adequate means to control OSH issues in terms of strategic health management. Our analyses demonstrated that health-related interventions contribute significantly to performance aspects such as quality, productivity, absenteeism, and cost reduction. Therefore, the financial impact of health-related aspects / interventions could be demonstrated by means of the OSH scorecard. Conclusions The availability and quality of health data within the context of overall corporate performance data needs to be improved in order to bridge the OSH-related and performance issues of an organization.

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