Description
This open-access brief offers routes to the solution of the threats to the safety performance of high-risk industries caused by skills challenges. It addresses the consequences of job transformation linked to technological developments, digitalization, unfavourable demographics and the lack of attractiveness of some high-risk industrial sectors, today and in the near future.
The first part of the brief highlights the questions:
What about the collective dimension of skills, skills acquired outside the professional sphere, or the longitudinal perspective of skills development?
Why do we sometimes encounter a learning wall, a situation in which the training and mentoring needs of newcomers exceed the capacity for skills transfer from experienced employees?
What are the impacts of digital transformation on the dynamics of work groups?
The contributors investigate aspects of these topics that are rarely studied or even considered.
The rest of the brief explores various solutions that can be considered to meet the skills challenge in a constantly evolving world. The second part offers avenues related to training, while the third focuses on organization and management.
Rather than providing standard answers, the brief provides a strategic, organizational and contextualized perspective on maintaining and developing skills for the future of high-risk industries in a changing world.
Researchers and practitioners in safety management and human resources issues will find this brief an important source of original thinking on problems that are becoming more and more current in safety-critical industries as they are in many others.
Introduction.- Part I: The Unthoughts.- A Longitudinal View of Competencies: Careers, Professional Paths, and Trajectories.- Managing Skills in a World of Radical Unpredictability: The Pioneering Experience of Nuclear Industry.- Digital Transitions in Industrial Work: Between Skill Development and Deskilling Risks.- Part II: Training Solutions.- Applying Resilience Engineering to Real-World Work.- Tackling the Eternal Beginners Problem in Safety Management: The Case of Occasional Crisis Responders.- Overcoming the paradox of training design for future and ill-defined practices: the case of nuclear dismantling teleoperators.- Part III: Managerial Solutions.- Skills and Careers by 2040: Emerging Challenges and Skills-Based Solutions to Foster Employability of Workers.- How to Address Skills Gaps: A Review of Organisational Strategies.- Competencies and Skills for Navigating Uncertain and Interdependent Systems of the Future.- Conclusion.
Stéphanie Tillement is Associate Professor in sociology at IMT Atlantique s Social Sciences Dpt (DI2S) and a researcher at LEMNA. Since 2022, she heads the RESOH (Research in Safety, Organizations, Humans) research Chair. She is particularly interested in the delicate balance between safety and performance, in various activity regimes (innovation, maintenance, decommissioning).
Caroline Kamaté holds a PhD in immunology. She has post-doctoral experience in academy (University Medical Center, Utrecht, Netherlands) and in industry (Sanofi-Aventis, France). Her interest for scientific communication led her to join FonCSI in 2007 where she is involved in the management of research programmes and dissemination of results.
Hervé Laroche is Emeritus Professor in the Management department at ESCP Business School. His research concerns decision-making processes in organizations, organizational reliability, and organizational secrecy. It has been published in Management, Organization Science, Organization Studies, Journal of Business Ethics, etc. He now is a member of he FonCSI since 2024.
Corinne Bieder is the Head of the Safety management research program at ENAC (the French Civil Aviation University). She has worked and conducted research in safety management in a variety of high-risk industries for many years. She has published a number of papers and books on safety management, and is a member of the international NeTWork think tank addressing safety from a multidisciplinary perspective. After being a member of its strategic analysis group, she took up the position of scientific director at FonCSI (Foundation for an Industrial Safety Culture) in 2024.
