IMCA, together with many sister trade associations, work towards the following vision:
By 2025 we want every organization in the marine contracting and energy industry to be able to say:
- The well-being of our workforce is a shared imperative;
- Our leadership demonstrates a culture of trust and inclusion by caring, listening to the workforce, making people feel valued for their contributions and supporting them;
- Human performance principles are embedded into how we design, operate and maintain our work environments, and we extend this across the whole supply chain and contributors.
We believe that, by working towards these aspiration, it lays the foundation for the daily delivery of safety and efficiency, it will enable an engaged and empowered workforce, and will allow us to safely supply the world with clean and affordable energy.
What is HOP?
Rather than being a programme for managing human error it is an operating philosophy providing a new way of looking at work, people and the systems in which people get work done.
One core principle of HOP is the recognition that making mistakes is normal: error is part of the human condition. An organisation’s processes and systems greatly influence employees’ decisions, choices, and actions, and consequently, their likelihood of successful work performance, i.e., quality work completed safely, on time and on budget.
It focuses on enhancing organizational processes and systems with an understanding that humans are fallible. Understanding this, organizations are better able to recognize, understand and address risk.
IMCA advocates for the following Five Principles of Human and Organisational Performance (HOP) as described by Dr. Todd Conklin as foundational ideas aimed at improving workplace safety and organisational learning:
- Human Error is Normal
- Blame Fixes Nothing
- Learning is Vital
- Context Drives Behaviour
- How You Respond to Failure Matters
The HOP perspective for organizations says the best way to design safer systems and work towards organizational excellence is to continually learn from “normal work” by treating people as problem-solvers rather than problems.
As a result, organizations that deploy HOP see;
- Significant improvements in employee engagement for safety,
- Increased ownership among employees;
- Work quality and system reliability, as well as safety and health performance, and
- Achieve levels of overall operational excellence that have never before been achieved.
The broader the integration of HOP (H&S, Environment, Engineering, Quality, Finance, etc.) the broader and greater the benefits will be.
The marine contracting industry relies on advanced human-machine interfaces, and its work activities have an increasingly complex organisational structure. Increasingly, work is performed by distributed teams and by remotely controlled technology.
Human and Organisational Performance (HOP) has become an important and integral part of the industry’s approach to improving safety and operational efficiency in the construction and maintenance of offshore energy facilities.
Preventing fatalities requires more than well-written protocols - it demands systems that anticipate human fallibility and adapt to real-world challenges.
The integration of the HOP principles into fatal risk management can transform those protocols into resilient, learning-focused tools that actively reduce risk.
HOP isn’t a separate initiative. It’s the foundation for designing and managing safety systems that work in the dynamic and high-stakes environments where fatal risks occur.
