High-risk technical industries are usually elaborated from a simple technical idea for basic needs. For example, nuclear production consists in producing electric energy from nuclear energy. That is to say taking the simple concept of the fission of atoms, obtain heat, then use it to transform liquid (usually water) into pressurized gas and use the energy to power a turbine. This turbine is coupled to an alternator which produces electricity. Unfortunately, the technical accomplishment of an apparently simple idea remains complex and leads to the elaboration of a complex technical system that may give rise to safety problems (Amalberti, 1996, 2001; Reason, 1990, 2008, 2016).
Men and women are required to help this complex technical system operate, within an organization which in itself is complex. The complex technical system therefore becomes a complex socio-technical system. The issues of safety and reliability thus remain crucial from a technical standpoint but also from organizational and human standpoints. Amalberti (1996) speaks of resident pathogenic agents within the socio-technical system “like a virus that would become active during any favorable context”. De la Garza and Fadier (2007) warn us about socio-technical systems that weaken over time (see also Heimann, 2005). This may be induced, among other factors, by the ignorance of certain risks, operation and production constraints and a tolerance within the organization that accepts that certain limits are exceeded (this is the normalization of deviation suggested by Vaughan, 1996, 2005).
The efficiency and the improvement of safety and reliability of such complex socio-technical systems are based in part on the professionalism of the workers. This is elaborated through professional training within a professionalization strategy. “Efficiency is gained by reducing the time it takes to reach a specified level of learning, and effectiveness is gained by achieving better results in performing the tasks learned” (Parush et al., 2002: 320).
They may be insidious such as those induced by the high level of requirements these sorts of industries demand thus leading to difficulties in applying overly complex procedures when compared to the basic information needed to perform the task: five lines to explain the core of the task and how to perform it, two pages to warn the operator about potential problems, two more pages listing what is forbidden, then four and a half pages describing the steps to be taken—all this rather than half a page of basic information regarding the action (see, for example, Fauquet-Alekhine, 2015: 5). This is the result of requirements and explicit or implicit regulations that constrain actions and interactions within the socio-technical system (Béguin & Clot, 2004; Bruno & Munoz, 2010; Hasu & Engestrom, 2000), combined with additional information resulting from feedback of the safety event analysis and pollution by operating details due to the belief that know-how and skills can be put on paper. The resulting procedure may be four times more pages than what is strictly necessary to understand how to carry out the task. This leads workers to blindly apply the procedure rather than trying to understand the application of the procedures or making intelligent use of the tools that are at their disposition (Butterworth, 2010). Dubar and Mercier (2002: 182), when presenting an analysis of experienced workers’ competencies at the French nuclear operator EDF, complained: “we write everything, we have to write everything and of course we must write competencies”. A more recent analysis carried out at a French nuclear power plant (Fauquet-Alekhine & Boucherand, 2011: 36) aiming at identifying organizational resource and difficulties suggested that professional training had to be restructured: “rethinking the integration of know-how in professional training is necessary, and prior rethinking of access to this know-how is necessary: the ‘all-in-procedure’ is not a solution”.
If workers are not educated to deal with such difficulties during the training period, then the associated know-how can be developed through mentoring,1 a period during which knowledge, know-how and operating skills are expected to improve or at least develop. But is it possible? Does it happen? The answer must be discussed by taking an emerging social factor of the past decade into account: the skills drain.
Western European industries, which include technological high-risk industries, must now come to terms with the problem of the skills drain (Fauquet-Alekhine, 2016; Fitzpatrick, 2011; Le Bellu, 2016; Manner, 2012; Newcombe, 2013; Richardson, 2012) due to retirement. This reduces the contribution of experienced workers for tutorial and periods of mentoring. This social phenomenon is combined with an established depletion of professionalization in a work context with drastic requirements that make the tools shaped and sized by operational and safety standards (Béguin & Clot, 2004; Bruno & Munoz, 2010; Hasu & Engestrom, 2000). The combination results in increasing difficulties for workers to fully apply procedures or use tools efficiently. The skills drain, not to be confused with “brain drain”, may have a consequence on industrial safety (Murphy, Bennett, Hoile, Borte, & Smith, 2010; Turner, 2013).
These findings point out the principal difficulties encountered by high-risk industries (skills drain, reduced contribution of experienced workers as a tutor and for mentoring, depletion of professionalization, tools shaped and sized by operational and safety standards and regulations, difficulties for workers to perform a comprehensive application of the procedures or a clever use of tools), both in the field of operating and in the field of training. Coping with these difficulties, or at least adapting them, could bring great benefits for the companies in terms of performance and for the employees’ well-being and health at work (e.g. see Clot, 2008).
However, this is not so easy. The overall problem comes from opposite considerations: the contribution of experienced workers is fundamental to the newcomers’ mentoring periods but most of the experienced workers have retired or are about to be retired. If this is not the case, their involvement in high-stakes work activities and on-call activities makes them unavailable for the training of newcomers.
The present book aims at providing an efficient solution to this issue by tackling the following question:
What should be transferred from experienced workers to novices through training in the curr...