RR271 - Recruiting safe employees for safety-critical roles

This document summarises an innovative research project undertaken by psychologists from the Occupational Psychology Centre (OPC) on behalf of Her Majesty' s Railway Inspectorate (HMRI). The study involved piloting a selection process for safety-critical employees within the UK rail industry. The process was piloted with employees working on the track and it involved:

  • identifying the key characteristics required for safe and effective performance in a range of safety-critical activities undertaken on the track that have not previously been analysed;
  • selecting suitable assessment tools to measure these key characteristics;
  • trialling these assessment tools with track worker applicants and existing track workers;
    and,
  • validating the assessment tools by demonstrating, wherever possible, the link between performance on the assessment tools and performance in training and on the job, including safety performance.

The Research Report Series are produced in Adobe Acrobat. The use of the latest version of the software is recommended which is available at the Adobe website via the link on this page.

Assistance in the use of Adobe Acrobat PDF files is available on our FAQs page.

Is this page useful?

Updated 2021-12-14