Human Factors in Safety Part 2: Social Aspects of Human Performance and Systems

Even the best-designed systems can fail without the right human inputs. This course, created with the Safety Academy by Qantas Group and RMIT Aviation Academy, explores the behavioural, social and organisational factors that influence performance in safety-critical environments.  

From leadership blind spots and communication breakdowns to team dynamics and workplace culture, you’ll learn how these forces shape reliability and resilience in high-risk settings. You’ll also examine medical and ergonomic issues that affect operations and see how leading organisations like Qantas address these challenges to keep complex systems running safely.  

By the end, you’ll have the tools to strengthen your Safety Management System, embed a culture of safety and collaboration, and apply lessons from aviation’s world-class safety practice to your own workplace. 

• Mid to senior career professionals working in high-risk, high-reliability industries, seeking to formalise or broaden their safety and risk management expertise. 
• Industry-embedded leaders and team managers responsible for safety across complex operational environments – from aviation and marine to rail, petrochemicals and public safety. 
• Professionals looking to transition from defense or public sector roles into corporate safety leadership positions. 
• Safety officers, airport managers, dispatchers, pilots and analysts wanting to upskill, stay current with evolving practices, and validate on-the-job experience with formal learning. 

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to: 

• Analyse and assess human performance capabilities and limitations across behavioural, cognitive and physical domains, and their implications for safety in organisational settings.
• Critically discuss selected Human Factors contributors within safety incidents, including the consequences of actions and inaction, with consideration of context and stakeholder perspectives.
• Apply Human Factors tools and strategies to assess human and organisational contributors to safety risks and inform organisational safety management activities.
• Communicate strategies and analysis of issues and evidence in the management of Human Factors issues in safety contexts using appropriate professional standards and formats to support collaborative safety decision-making.
• Present Human Factors interventions that are evidence-informed, ethical, responsive to stakeholder needs, and appropriate to organisational safety management practices.

This 6-week course is delivered 100% online with flexible, guided learning you can fit around your schedule. You’ll explore real incident case studies, join live webinars, and connect with mentors for practical insights. 

Each module builds your skills step by step, culminating in a final analysis project where you’ll develop clear recommendations to improve safety management in your organisation. 

You’ll be able to evaluate how leadership, teamwork, organisational culture, ergonomics and medical factors shape safety outcomes. You’ll graduate confident in developing strategies to strengthen Safety Management Systems and team collaboration, drawing on insights from the Safety Academy’s world-class aviation safety practice. 

This is Part 2 of Human Factors for Investigators. Part 1 is Human Factors in Safety: Cognitive Performance. These courses are designed to be taken one after the other.