Human Factors and Ergonomics Audits¶

Status: emerging
Last updated: 2026-05-31
Sources: 9781119636113.Ch33.Pdf
Tags: [hfe-audits, inspection, checklists, system-evaluation, occupational-safety, methods]

Summary¶

Human factors and ergonomics audits are systematic evaluations of the HFE aspects of human-machine systems, building on the related human-machine tasks of inspecting, checking, and auditing (Drury & Dempsey, 2021). The chapter has two aims: to analyse inspecting, checking, and auditing as tasks that can guide work, equipment, and job-aid design, and to apply that knowledge to auditing HFE aspects of systems, including a worked example of recent audit programs. Examples span product usability audits, aviation preflight checklists, and quality-assurance inspection.

Body¶

Context¶

Drury and Dempsey (2021), in their handbook chapter on human factors and ergonomics audits, examine the systematic evaluation of the HFE aspects of human-machine systems. They pursue two aims: to analyse inspecting, checking, and auditing as human-machine tasks that can guide work, equipment, and job-aid design, and to apply that knowledge to auditing HFE aspects of systems, including a worked example of recent audit programs. Within this knowledge base the article is the proactive, standards-checking counterpart to the after-the-event focus of Accident And Incident Investigation: both evaluate system safety, but auditing checks systems against criteria in advance. It draws on the error-task analysis of Human Error And Reliability, evaluates the qualities measured by Usability And User Experience, and applies the criteria codified in Hfe Standards.

Key Points¶

Auditing is treated both as a task to be studied and as a method to be applied. The two interrelated aims — examining inspecting, checking, and auditing to guide work design, equipment design, and job-aid development, and applying this to auditing the HFE aspects of systems — mean the chapter analyses the human performance of auditors as carefully as the systems being audited (PDF p. 1, orig. p. 853).

Drury and Dempsey draw examples from a wide range of domains, citing product usability audits, aviation preflight checklists, and inspection of products for quality assurance. This breadth establishes inspecting, checking, and auditing as general human-machine activities rather than domain-specific procedures, allowing principles from one domain to inform another (PDF p. 1, orig. p. 853).

Inspection is presented as an ancient and enduring activity, as old as civilisation, illustrated by the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh inviting the reader to inspect the walls of Uruk almost 5000 years ago. This positions modern HFE auditing as a formalised continuation of a long-standing practice of checking quality against a standard (PDF pp. 1–2, orig. pp. 853–854).

The chapter progresses from checking and checklists to full HFE auditing, treating checking and checklists as a distinct topic (PDF p. 4, orig. p. 856) before turning to auditing with specific application to human factors, supported by a detailed review and worked example (PDF p. 6, orig. p. 858).

Conclusion¶

Drury and Dempsey (2021) conclude that effective HFE auditing depends on understanding auditing as a human-machine task in its own right: because auditors are themselves subject to the performance limits the chapter analyses, sound audit methodology moves from simple verification tools toward systematic, well-designed audit programs grounded in human-factors knowledge.

References¶

Drury, C.G. & Dempsey, P.G. (2021) 'Human Factors and Ergonomics Audits', in Salvendy, G. & Karwowski, W. (eds.) Handbook of Human Factors and Ergonomics. 5th edn. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. drury2021hfeaudits

Open Questions¶

How does the human performance of auditors themselves limit the reliability of HFE audits?
How should checklists be designed to avoid the complacency and missed signals seen in inspection failures?