2026 Community of Human and Organizational Learning 32nd Annual Conference

At Davey, we are constantly striving to build an organization comprised of more resilient systems through operationalizing Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) principles and ideas. One way Davey has started Operationalizing HOP is through Field Studies. Field Studies are frontline surveys/interviews conducted by our Health and Safety Team to use field knowledge, expertise, and success to guide our solution creation process around known serious injury and fatality hazards in our work. Our most recent field study is currently being used to strategize Davey’s 2026 approach to reduce falls from height, a hazard that has seriously affected the arboriculture industry since its inception. Another way Davey has started operationalizing HOP is through Foresight, a tool for hazard identification and mitigation. Foresight is a tool built to help frontline employees recognize and mitigate hazards on their jobsite that they will face that day. Building off our recognize, protect, and reconsider action cycle, Foresight keeps our most serious areas of significant injury and fatality at the forefront of our employee’s consideration every day.

Organizations with limited resources often assume meaningful HSE improvement requires new programs, technology, or headcount. In reality, some of the most effective improvements come from better leadership behaviors, clearer priorities, and stronger system design. This session challenges the myth that progress requires capital and demonstrates how Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) can drive real results in scrappy, fast-moving environments.


Grounded in real-world experience, the session explores why traditional, compliance-heavy approaches often fail to prevent serious incidents in resource-constrained organizations and how a human-centered HOP approach provides a practical alternative. Participants are introduced to core HOP principles—learning from normal work, understanding variability, and designing systems that support people under real conditions—in ways that are immediately applicable.


A key focus is serious injury and fatality prevention through identification and strengthening of critical controls, using simple, no-cost risk assessment techniques. The session also highlights leadership behaviors that influence trust, learning, and culture without formal programs or additional resources. Participants will leave with practical tools and zero-cost actions they can implement immediately.

Elite athletes visualize failure before it happens, yet most organizations wait for an incident to learn. What if frontline workers were trained like top performers instead of compliance check boxes?


Organizations invest significant time and resources in training yet many struggle to prove how learning translates into real-world performance and measurable risk reduction. Completion rates and certifications may demonstrate participation, but they rarely indicate readiness decision quality or the ability to perform under pressure.


High-performing athletes do not rely on repetition alone. They use visualization to mentally rehearse high-risk scenarios anticipate mistakes and execute effectively when it matters most. This session challenges leaders to apply the same performance principle to frontline work where the cost of failure includes injuries downtime regulatory exposure and reputational risk.


The session explores how organizations can move beyond compliance-based learning by connecting training visualization and operational data. By linking learning programs with incidents, near misses, audits, human performance indicators and making risk visible organizations can enable frontline teams to mentally rehearse the scenarios they are most likely to face. This approach transforms training from a static event into a dynamic system that reinforces critical behaviors before incidents occur. Attendees will learn practical executive-relevant approaches for aligning learning investments with real operational risk improving frontline adoption and creating continuous feedback loops between learning EHS and operations. The session highlight show connected systems allow leaders to measure what truly matters preparedness performance and risk reduction.


Key takeaways include:

1. How to shift learning from a compliance requirement to a performance and risk management lever
2. Why visualization is a proven but underutilized capability in frontline safety and operations
3. How to connect training with real-world safety and operational data to drive relevance
4. Strategies for improving frontline engagement without adding burden
5. Metrics that reflect readiness behavior change and impact on risk 

HOP, In a Box! – Accelerating Human and Organizational Performance Across Boundaries
When direct control isn’t possible, how can organizations help partners adopt Human Performance Improvement (HPI) principles? At Southern Company Gas, we faced this challenge with our contract partners and developed HOP, In a Box! a scalable approach grounded in the Principles of Human Performance Improvement and the use of Learning Teams to understand contractor utility damage events. 
 
This initiative delivered free, modular webinars and mobile resources to guide partners, many of which were small companies without resources to hire consultants, through building a business case, understanding HPI fundamentals, implementing strategies, and applying learning teams for event response. By making HPI tools accessible and copyright‑free, we enabled partners to integrate HOP concepts into their own organizations without mandates or barriers.
 
The result: measurable reductions in contractor facility damages and stronger learning cultures. This presentation shares how democratizing HPI resources can foster reliability, resilience, and sustained performance improvement across organizational boundaries.

Operational waste, such as rework, friction, workarounds, delays, duplicated steps, and overcomplicated controls, is often your earliest signal of system stress. These are not just productivity problems. They are indicators that Work-as-Imagined (WAI) and Work-as-Done (WAD) are drifting apart.


Most organizations manage to the Black Line, the procedures, rules, and documented controls that describe how work should happen. But performance actually lives in the Blue Line, how work really gets done under real-world pressure, variability, and constraint.


The gap between Black Line and Blue Line is where learning lives. And it’s also where waste, friction, control erosion, and weak signals begin to accumulate. Most safety systems focus on closing compliance gaps. High-performing systems focus on understanding alignment gaps.


This session explores how HOP and operational learning tools, like the 4Ds, and AI can help you systematically learn from everyday operations at scale, not just from incidents. Instead of waiting for failure, you’ll discover how to surface early indicators of system strain by examining where WAI and WAD diverge across sites, teams, and environments.


You’ll learn how operational waste reveals:

1. Where work is “Difficult” and creating cognitive overload
2. Where processes are “Different” and introducing instability
3. Where exposure is becoming “Dangerous” beneath normal production
4. Where systems are “Dumb” adding steps that no longer make sense

These signals show up long before injury or loss. They show up in everyday work.


To scale this learning, organizations must move beyond isolated conversations and static reports. This scaling will be constrained without using AI as a Learning Amplifier, Not a Control Mechanism. An ethical and human-centered approach to AI is vital. AI should be:

1. A pattern amplifier, not a people predictor
2. A sensemaking assistant, not a decision-maker
3. A weak signal detector, not a surveillance tool
4. A conversation catalyst, not a compliance enforcer

AI helps connect Blue Line realities across operations. Humans interpret the meaning.

By 2026, digital JSAs, operational digital twins, sentry cobots, AI copilots, and wearable technologies are no longer futuristic concepts — they are becoming part of everyday work. Yet these same technologies sit at a critical crossroads: they can be used to surveil people to ensure they do work compliantly, or to design systems so people can work safely.
The difference isn’t the technology. It’s intent.
This session takes participants through a “day in the life” of three roles in 2026 — a frontline worker, a manager, and an engineer — each interacting with advanced digital tools. For each role, two possible futures are explored. In one, technology becomes a compliance engine, amplifying oversight, reinforcing blame, and threatening professional identity and expertise. In the other, technology becomes a capacity-building partner, reshaping work design, revealing hidden constraints, and enabling resilient human performance.
Drawing on Human and Organizational Performance (HOP, the session explores a central tension of innovation: every innovation threatens someone’s expertise — and resistance is often a rational and predictable response. Participants will examine how intent, governance, and organizational learning practices determine whether technology becomes a digital tattletale or a cognitive aid.
This session explores the next frontier of HOP: designing digital systems that support how humans actually think, learn, and perform.

Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) principles have been in existence for decades, distilled from research, field experience, and lessons learned across various industries. These principles are deceptively simple—recognizing human fallibility, understanding that context drives behavior, and valuing learning as a core mechanism for improvement. Yet knowing the principles and living them are two very different challenges.

Frontlines workers are hired to complete tasks. Sometimes those tasks are completed in dynamic environments working close to high energy. Cognitive overload is a real issue for workers adapting to solve problems, especially if a task is unfamiliar.

Artificial Intelligence is already drafting risk assessments, analysing incident data, generating safety communications, and automating assurance workflows. But does that trajectory end with AI supporting safety practice—or replacing it? This double breakout session uses a structured, high-energy debate format to test that question in real time, separating hype from operational reality and exposing what “replacement” really means in complex sociotechnical systems.
In the first 50-minute session, participants will nominate as speakers and be randomly allocated to either the Affirmative (“AI will replace the Safety Practitioner”) or the Negative (“AI will not replace the Safety Practitioner”). Teams will rapidly build their case using guided prompts and fast research, while the rest of the room engages in a facilitated, interactive discussion to surface assumptions, evidence, risks, and ethical boundaries. Together we will map the strongest arguments on both sides—covering capability, accountability, regulation, human judgement, leadership, organisational learning, and the messy realities of work-as-done.


In the second 50-minute session, the room becomes a formal debating chamber. Teams deliver timed opening statements, structured rebuttals, and closing arguments, supported by a timekeeper and clear rules of engagement. The audience acts as adjudicators, voting on the winner and sharing the reasoning behind their decision. The facilitator will officiate, synthesise themes, and provide feedback—connecting debate insights to practical implications for the safety profession: what to automate, what to augment, what to protect, and what new capability the next generation of safety practitioners will need.


Participants will leave with a sharper, evidence-informed view of AI’s realistic role in safety—and a clearer line between tasks that can be mechanised and responsibilities that must remain human-led.

Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) reminds us that error is normal, context drives behavior, learning is vital, and how leaders respond matters. But how do we know whether these principles are truly alive in an organization?


The answer may be found in language.


This session explores how the everyday language used between frontline leaders and crews during planning conversations serves as a real-time indicator of system health, psychological safety, and learning capacity. Drawing on analysis of millions of operational conversations, we examine how patterns in questioning, participation, hazard discussion, and tone reveal whether an organization is fostering engagement or reinforcing compliance.


Work environments characterized by stronger conversational quality demonstrated significantly lower incident likelihood, suggesting that language itself can function as a leading indicator of operational risk.


By making workplace dialogue visible through simple capture and scalable language analysis, organizations can move beyond lagging metrics and begin measuring level of psychological safety, risk, performance and learning capacity directly. This session offers a practical framework and field proven platform for leaders seeking to operationalize HOP principles by paying close attention to the words that shape performance every day.

Boulder Scientific Company, a specialty chemical manufacturer based in Mead, Colorado, faced significant challenges following its acquisition by a private equity firm in 2019. The firm's objective was to revitalize the organization, enhance its value, and position it for profitable resale, with a critical focus on overhauling its safety approach and outcomes. Initial efforts employing traditional safety methodologies not only failed to yield improvements but exacerbated existing issues, leading to deteriorating performance metrics.


Seeking an innovative solution, Boulder Scientific engaged G.R.I.T. USA Inc. to develop and execute a comprehensive Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) roadmap and implementation strategy. Now in the third year of this multi-phase initiative, the organization has achieved remarkable progress. By the conclusion of the second year, Boulder Scientific received recognition from the Society of Chemical Manufacturers & Affiliates (SOCMA) for its exemplary safety achievements, underscoring the efficacy of HOP strategies and methodologies in fostering a resilient safety culture.


This presentation will detail the HOP implementation process, highlighting key strategies that bridged strategic objectives with frontline operations. Attendees will gain insights into quantifiable return on investment (ROI) metrics, including reductions in incident rates, enhanced operational efficiency, and financial gains that supported the private equity turnaround goals. Furthermore, a structured five-year roadmap will be outlined, enabling organizations to transition to full independence from external consultants while sustaining long-term HOP integration. Through this case study, participants will acquire practical tools for driving cultural transformation, risk mitigation, and performance optimization in high-stakes industries.

What if we told you that human error isn’t the problem – it’s the key to improvement?  Welcome to the world of Human and Organizational Performance (HOP), where failure isn’t a dead end but a doorway to learning.  In this engaging and eye-opening session, we’ll break down the core principles of HOP, exploring how organizations can shift from a culture of blame to one of resilience, adaptability, and continuous improvement.   Through real-world examples, interactive discussion, and practical takeaways, you’ll discover why traditional safety and performance models fall short – and how embracing a HOP mindset can drive better outcomes for individuals, teams, and entire organizations.  Whether you’re new to HOP or looking to reinforce foundational concepts, this session will challenge the way you think about mistakes, accountability, and success.  

Neurodivergent, Neurotypical, Neurodiverse – These terms keep popping up in social media as a rapidly increasing contingent of the public self identifies as having an atypical neurotype. What does this mean for those of us working in Safety, Quality, and Organization Learning roles? How do we make the most of this new awareness to raise our social Intelligence Quotients and foster both deeper understanding and greater team efficiency.


Disclaimer: I am not a clinician. I am not a neuroscientist. What I am is a Late diagnosed Autistic with ADHD who has become a consumer of content put out by the neurodivergent community, both scientific and social. Everything I take in is carefully curated and catalogued in the ever-curious, correlation-based, content management system in my brain. However, frequently this data is repackaged in a way that people have found relatable, meaningful, and informative, so I keep building binders and developing abstracts.   In this 50 minute breakout I will provide some social context for Understanding the differences in Communications and Processing styles for our Neurodivergent teammates and start a dialogue about how to better integrate their unique perspectives into our learning teams.

How much money do large corporations spend on coffee each year?  The answer is often millions of dollars.  Compare that to their investment in disciplined organizational learning... and you will see that coffee frequently wins by a large margin!

This is not an indictment of coffee!  But it does raise an important question: Why do organizations routinely underinvest in the systems that reduce failure, strengthen margins, and build resilience?

Organizations invest in training, investigations, learning reviews, and improvement initiatives.  Yet few can clearly articulate the return on those investments.  As a result, organizational learning is often reactive and compliance-driven rather than positioned as a strategic capability.  That gap represents a significant lost opportunity.

This session explores how to quantify what truly counts.

Rather than reducing learning to financial metrics alone, we will examine ROI as a systems design question: How does organizational learning reduce problem burden, strengthen safety and operational buffer, improve decision quality, and enhance long-term performance.  And how do we measure impact?

Participants will explore a practical framework built around three elements:

• Problem Burden – The quantitative and qualitative costs of recurring failures, inefficiencies, and unmanaged risk
• Learning Capability Investment – The investment required to build and sustain disciplined learning systems
• Return – Risk reduction, stability, decision quality, and operational resilience

Through real-world examples across high-risk industries, we will examine:

• How to model the cost of reactive learning
• How to view organizational learning as a strategic investment
• How to communicate learning value in the language of decision makers
• How to avoid “learning activity” that produces motion without measurable impact

Artificial Intelligence is already drafting risk assessments, analysing incident data, generating safety communications, and automating assurance workflows. But does that trajectory end with AI supporting safety practice—or replacing it? This double breakout session uses a structured, high-energy debate format to test that question in real time, separating hype from operational reality and exposing what “replacement” really means in complex sociotechnical systems.
In the first 50-minute session, participants will nominate as speakers and be randomly allocated to either the Affirmative (“AI will replace the Safety Practitioner”) or the Negative (“AI will not replace the Safety Practitioner”). Teams will rapidly build their case using guided prompts and fast research, while the rest of the room engages in a facilitated, interactive discussion to surface assumptions, evidence, risks, and ethical boundaries. Together we will map the strongest arguments on both sides—covering capability, accountability, regulation, human judgement, leadership, organisational learning, and the messy realities of work-as-done.


In the second 50-minute session, the room becomes a formal debating chamber. Teams deliver timed opening statements, structured rebuttals, and closing arguments, supported by a timekeeper and clear rules of engagement. The audience acts as adjudicators, voting on the winner and sharing the reasoning behind their decision. The facilitator will officiate, synthesise themes, and provide feedback—connecting debate insights to practical implications for the safety profession: what to automate, what to augment, what to protect, and what new capability the next generation of safety practitioners will need.


Participants will leave with a sharper, evidence-informed view of AI’s realistic role in safety—and a clearer line between tasks that can be mechanised and responsibilities that must remain human-led.