The Analysis of Age and Experience of Incident Victims: A Case Study in Japan to Improve HSE Training Programs

How can a company improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its HSE (Health, Safety, and Environment) training? This paper, based on an analysis of the victims of incidents over the last ten years, discusses strategic allocation of training resources to high-risk groups of workers. The scope of the study encompassed domestic operations of Japan Petroleum Exploration Co., Ltd., including contractors, involving incidents resulting in Medical Treatment Cases or more severe cases that took place between 2008 and 2017. The victims’ ages and years of experience were extracted from sixty-eight incident reports. This study revealed that the median age of the victims was 35.5 years and median length of experience was 6.0 years. Half of the victims were either 35 years old or younger or their experience level was less than 6 years. Furthermore, the correlations between the victims’ ages and years of experience indicated that the younger and the less experienced workforce accounted for 43% of the total incidents. A comparison with government statistics implies that the frequency of incidents is higher in workers who are younger and less experienced. According to Japan's Labor Force Survey, the population of employed persons aged 15 to 34 years accounts for only 29% of the total Japanese working-age population. Moreover, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry reported a trend that 42% of the victims of mining incidents across the country had less than five years of experience, which reaffirmed the trend that prevails across the industry. Providing more intensive and/or frequent training to the young and the less experienced workforce must be a resource-efficient approach to improve HSE performance. Targeted training will be more effective and beneficial for participants than "one size fits all" HSE awareness sessions. HSE planners in organizations should carry out studies based on their company's incident databases to obtain specific results that will be useful for the further evolution of HSE training programs.