From hindsight to insight : HOP (Human and Organizational Performance) in Practice with Kristian Gould, 16/1, 2025
- Jan 20, 2025
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 14, 2025
What?
Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) has become a popular safety approach across industries. HOP is not a new theory or tool. It packages a range of modern safety philosophies in a format that is easier to communicate and use. The benefits of this approach include more proactive leadership, improved learning from incidents and strengthened trust. It also enables practical use of Human Factors throughout the organization.
Equinor has worked with HOP integration over the past three years. This has resulted in changes to how the company measures safety performance, how it develops leadership capabilities and how it conducts normal safety activities. Together with the Federation of Norwegian Industry (Norsk Industri), the company has also worked with developing practical HOP guidelines and training material (see links to access this material further down).
SÄKU started off 2025 by welcoming Kristian Gould, PhD and Human Factors and Organizational Safety Specialist at Equinor, who talked about what motivated this effort and how it has been carried out in practice.
As always, the audience also got the chance to ask their questions.
The webinar was held in English.
About Kristian Gould
Kristian Gould is part of Equinor’s corporate safety team, where he works as a specialist in human factors and organizational safety. He has a PhD in Human Factors from the University of Bergen, where he worked with research on navigation safety in the Royal Norwegian Navy. He lives in Oslo.
About Norsk Industri
Norsk Industri (The Federation of Norwegian Industries) is a federation founded in 2005, when the Federation of Norwegian Manufacturing Industries (TBL) and the Federation of Norwegian Process Industries (PIL) joined. Norsk Industri is part of the overall Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO). Norsk Industri is similar to the Swedish “Teknikföretagen”, part of Svenskt Näringsliv.
About Equinor
Equinor is an international energy company headquartered in Norway, with over 23 000 employees in around 30 countries worldwide. Equinor was called Statoil until 2018 when the rebranding took place. It’s majority-owned by the Norwegian state.
Material
Presentation
Kristian's presentation from the webinar can be downloaded HERE.
Mentimeter
Two Mentimeter questions were asked to the participants. The questions were:
Access the HOP material from Norsk Industri
The material and guide on how to work with HOP in practice can be applied to all industrial sectors and is available in both Norwegian and English.
The webiste can be seen HERE (in English) or HERE (in Norwegian)
The introductory video "Being Human" can be seen HERE (only available in English)
The presentation "HOP in Practice" can be seen HERE (in English) or HERE (in Norwegian)
The guide "HOP in Practice" can be seen HERE (in English) or HERE (in Norwegian)
Frequently asked questions (FAQ) about HOP can be seen HERE (in English) or HERE (in Norwegian)
The HOP approach at Equinor
Equinor has created a short two minute video to show how the company works with the HOP approach. Watch it HERE (in English) and HERE (in Norwegian).
Equinor’s wep page with learning packages (Always safe)
The Equinor web page that Kristian’s showed during the presentation, containing further information and learning packages, was called Always safe. You can reach it HERE (in English).
Kristian's guest appearance at Todd Conklin's podcast
Kristian visited the Todd Conklin’s podcast Pre-Accident Investigations in May 2024. You can listen to the episode HERE or search for the episode on your favorite music stream service.
Contact information
If you want to get in touch with Kristian, you can connect with him on LinkedIn and/or through his email:
Kristian Gould: kgou@equinor.com
Recording
A recording of the webinar can be seen on SÄKUPlay (Youtube) below.