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Lexicon: Z

 Z is for Zeigarnik

Friday 24th April 2020
We round off the alphabet by considering how to use the Russian psychologist's work in OSH
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Y is for Yerkes-Dodson

 Y is for Yerkes-Dodson

Thursday 2nd April 2020
The strength of the stimulus as the experimental variable, with performance as the result.
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x

 X is for gens X, Y and Z

Wednesday 4th March 2020
While it is no longer acceptable to assume that all men are stronger than all women, or that people of one colour have different personalities to those of another colour it is, it appears, entirely acceptable to declare that anyone born since 1980 is addicted to social media and will ‘challenge traditional hierarchical HSE systems’, while anyone born before that date is a luddite with no understanding of the modern age, but will be quite happy to toe the line.
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Image credit: ©iStock/francescoch

 W is for WYLFIWYF

Thursday 27th February 2020
In the days when most computers had black screens with green text, the term ‘What You See Is What You Get’ (WYSIWYG, pronounced whizzy-wig) referred to new computers that were being developed by companies like Apple and Xerox, where documents appeared on the screen as they would be printed.
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 V is for violation

Tuesday 7th January 2020
In J is for Just Culture, the definition for the term was given as “a culture in which frontline operators and others are not punished for actions, omissions or decisions taken by them which are commensurate with their experience and training, but where gross negligence, wilful violations and destructive acts are not tolerated” (see IOSH Magazine, January 2019: bit.ly/37jtUXN).
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 U is for underlying cause

Monday 9th December 2019
In C is for Causality we questioned the nature of causality. When Fred trips on building materials across the path while making a phone call, did the obstacle cause the trip or was Fred’s inattention the cause?
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 T is for Therp

Thursday 14th November 2019
Imagine there are two identical buttons on a machine. The one on the right switches it on; the one on the left switches it off. The operator knows this because they have been trained. 
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 S is for SRK (Skill, rule, knowledge)

Sunday 13th October 2019
Forty years ago, the Danish engineer Jens Rasmussen published his SRK framework, distinguishing between skill-based, rule-based and knowledge-based behaviours. 
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 R is for risk homeostasis

Monday 2nd September 2019
In his 1879 publication Notes on Railroad Accidents, Charles Francis Adams describes how a rail company chose not to implement a block protection system because it feared that “those in charge of trains and tracks, who have been educated into a reliance upon it under ordinary circumstances, will, from force of habit if nothing else, go on relying upon it, and disaster will surely follow”.  
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 Q is for questions

Thursday 18th July 2019
There are many situations where safety and health professionals need to ask questions. From interviewing potential recruits, through safety conversations and audits to accident investigations, the right question, asked in the right way at the right time, might provide the crucial information. The wrong question, or one asked tactlessly, can cause someone to clam up or provide a misleading answer.
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