Posted By Kieran J Duignan
Andrew

The concept of 'safety capabilities' is not one with which I'm familiar.

As a chartered occupational psychologist, however, I have some familiarity with designing and executing selection processes that can be evaluated for reliability and validity as well as compliance with discrimination law.

If you want to assess whether an individual is vulnerable to hazards in your very basic factory floorbased job, to carry out a reliabile, valid and legitimate selection process you would need to pinpoint hazards arising from tasks of this job. For example, musculoskeletal dirorders are a hazard associated with factory jobs marked by postural strains, uses of force, hand or body vibration, repetition and few breaks. There is a well-designed psychometric tool you can use to screen for such disorders and, if appropriate, consider whether an individual might be unduly exposed to hazards which can't be adequately controlled.

May I emphasise the need to specify the task-related hazards before considering using such 'heavy duty' selection tools.