Job-Related Knowledge: The Hidden Powerhouse of HSE Performance
I still remember the moment vividly — the one that changed how I see safety forever.
It was during my Master’s research at Eindhoven University of Technology under the mentorship of the late Gary Scholes — my mentor, manager, and the person who first challenged me to look for what he called “the Holy Grail of HSE performance.”
We were trying to answer a simple yet impossible question:
How do you measure the lives that were never lost because safety worked?
That’s the paradox of HSE management — the cost of avoidance. You can easily count the costs of accidents, but how do you quantify the accidents that never happened?
Measuring HSE performance in a reliable manner is vital since that is the only way to know the strengths and the capacity for safety that exists in the organisation
So, I built a model — a structured decision hierarchy to measure what really drives safety performance.
We gathered a panel of industry experts, used a mathematical deliberation technique (the Analytic Hierarchy Process), and compared dozens of factors to see which mattered most.
Then came the surprise.
The Shock of the Findings
I was convinced that Culture or Compliance would top the list. They didn’t.
The factor with the single greatest impact on HSE performance — a staggering 26% contribution — turned out to be:
Job-related knowledge of frontline workers.
Twenty-six percent.
One-quarter of your safety performance is influenced most, not by systems, processes, or procedures — but on how well your people actually know their jobs.
And when you think about it, it makes perfect sense.
Why Knowledge Beats Compliance
Safety in high-risk industries doesn’t begin with rules — it begins with understanding.
Frontline staff are the first to sense when something isn’t right — a subtle vibration, a strange noise, a pressure reading just off normal.
If they understand what those signals mean, they can act before small deviations become big disasters.
Compliance might tick the box.
But competence — true job-related knowledge — is what keeps people alive.
A knowledgeable operator doesn’t just follow a checklist.
They understand why each step exists, how systems interact, and what could go wrong if something is skipped.
That awareness turns routine work into continuous risk management.
So, How Do You Build It?
Developing this kind of capability is not about one-off training.
It’s about building a living knowledge system across your organization:
- Ongoing mentoring — where experienced hands pass on not just the “how,” but the “why”
- Scenario-based learning — linking classroom concepts to the messy realities of operations
- Psychological safety — a culture where questions are encouraged, not ignored
- Continuous learning — from incidents, near-misses, and best practices.
According to Harvard’s Amy Edmondson, workplaces that foster psychological safety — where people feel safe to speak up and learn — do more than just avoid accidents. For example, one benchmark shift (from 30%→60% of employees believing their voice matters) corresponded to a 27% drop in turnover, a 40% drop in safety incidents, and a 12% jump in productivity. When you invest in genuine engagement, mentoring, and learning culture, you’re not only improving safety — you’re improving reliability, cost-efficiency and trust.
Because in the end, knowledge reduces uncertainty — and uncertainty is the most expensive risk of all.
From Data to Purpose
So all in all, if you want to make a step change in your HSE management, start with enhancing job-related knowledge.
Think about that the next time you approve a training budget or redesign an induction program.
Technology can assist.
Procedures can guide.
But only knowledge empowers people to act — confidently, correctly, and in time.
A Question to You
How well do you know that your frontline teams really know what to do — not just under normal conditions, but when things start to go wrong? And how can we now use AI-based tools to measure, sustain, and grow that knowledge — before it fades, transfers, or gets lost?
Because ultimately, safety isn’t built by paperwork.
It’s built by people who know.
(The link to the Master’s research thesis is available in this link here.)
