Why Stop Work Authority is not Enough
Our experience has shown us that many undesirable events have occurred when workers are confronted with unexpected or undesirable conditions and instead of stopping, human nature takes over and we continue to try and get the job done. This is the case at many companies, who have attempted to institutionalize a Stop Work Authority program, by setting the expectation to use “Stop Work Authority”, yet they find that their workers are not using it and not supporting other workers that do. There are numerous reasons for this, and we will explore them in this module.
We have discovered through analysis of multiple undesirable events that there are visual cues that existed 90% of the time prior to undesirable events. We have found in most cases this information was not acted upon and resulted in an undesired outcome.
We believe that front-line workers are the solution as they touch the system daily and can identify visible cues (“Triggers”) that are present which tell you something is wrong with your defenses. However, before this can happen, workers need to understand the importance of Stopping When Uncertain.
In this presentation you will learn why Stop Work Authority programs don’t work and how to better understand human nature’s response to uncertainty so that a proper “STOP Work” can be used effectively.