Distinguish Learning Reviews from traditional root cause investigations focused on assigning individual blame.
Occupational Health & Safety
Running Learning Teams to Understand Work-as-Done
Learn to facilitate Learning Team sessions that uncover local rationality behind frontline decisions and turn worker narratives into system-level change, not blame.
🗓️Duration5 training days
📚Content4 modules · 8 sessions
🎓On completionAccredited attendance certificate
About the programme
Course Overview
Traditional investigations often ask why a worker failed to follow a procedure, arriving at findings that satisfy an audit trail but leave the underlying conditions untouched. The Learning Team approach asks a different question: why did the worker's actions make sense to them at the time, given the information, tools and pressures they actually faced. This course trains participants to facilitate Learning Team sessions that reconstruct work-as-done through sensemaking rather than assigning cause, drawing on just culture principles to protect participants from blame while still surfacing what needs to change. Participants practise structuring conversations around local rationality, drawing detailed narratives from frontline workers through open questioning, and building timelines and causal maps from accounts that sometimes conflict. The course also covers writing learning reports that carry frontline insight to decision-makers without naming individuals, and embedding Learning Teams into the wider reporting and management system so they become a routine response to both incidents and everyday work. Teaching uses recorded and live facilitation practice, causal mapping exercises and report-writing workshops built around realistic operational scenarios.
Expected Learning Outcomes
Establish psychological safety and just culture conditions before running a Learning Team session.
Facilitate open conversations that reconstruct local rationality behind frontline decisions.
Build timelines and causal maps from multiple, sometimes conflicting, worker accounts.
Separate systemic contributors from individual performance factors in learning findings.
Write learning reports that influence decision-makers without exposing individuals to blame.
Embed Learning Teams into reporting processes and train internal facilitators to sustain the practice.
Who Should Attend
Safety and investigation professionals seeking alternatives to blame-focused root cause analysis.
Human factors practitioners interested in sensemaking and local rationality approaches to learning.
Site managers and supervisors who participate in or sponsor Learning Team sessions.
Internal facilitators being trained to run structured learning conversations independently.
Safety culture leads working to build trust and honest reporting across frontline teams.
Organisational learning specialists translating frontline narratives into system-level change.
Course Modules
Select any module to see its sessions and points.
01Principles of the Learning Team Approach
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Distinguishing Learning Reviews from Traditional Root Cause Investigations
- Compare the goals of a Learning Review with those of a traditional root cause investigation focused on assigning cause.
- Explain why asking why an action made sense to the worker at the time replaces asking why the procedure was not followed.
- Identify situations, such as high-consequence near misses, where a Learning Team approach adds more value than a formal investigation.
- Recognise the limits of the Learning Team method and when a statutory or criminal investigation must take precedence.
Session 2Establishing Psychological Safety and Just Culture Before Sessions Begin
- Establish ground rules that protect participants from blame and disciplinary consequences during a learning session.
- Brief managers and supervisors on their role in supporting, not directing, a Learning Team conversation.
- Apply just culture principles to distinguish honest mistakes from reckless or wilful violations before a session starts.
- Prepare participants for a Learning Team session by explaining its purpose, structure and confidentiality boundaries.
02Facilitating Learning Team Sessions
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Structuring Conversations Around Local Rationality and Sensemaking
- Frame questions around local rationality, exploring what information, goals and pressures shaped a worker's decision.
- Guide participants through a sensemaking exercise that reconstructs their understanding of the situation as it unfolded.
- Avoid hindsight bias by asking what was known at the time rather than what is known now.
- Recognise when a participant's account reveals a mismatch between procedure and the tools or time actually available.
Session 2Facilitation Techniques for Drawing Out Work-as-Done Narratives
- Use open, non-leading questions to draw out a detailed narrative of work-as-done rather than a summary of outcomes.
- Apply active listening and silence to encourage participants to describe routine variations they consider unremarkable.
- Manage group dynamics so junior workers speak as freely as supervisors during a mixed-seniority session.
- Recognise emotional cues that signal a participant needs support before continuing with a sensitive account.
03Mapping and Analysing What Was Learned
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Building Timeline and Causal Maps from Multiple Worker Accounts
- Construct a shared timeline from multiple, sometimes conflicting, worker accounts of the same sequence of events.
- Build a causal map that links contributing conditions rather than a single root cause to the outcome.
- Cross-check timeline details against physical evidence, logs and equipment data without undermining participant trust.
- Reconcile discrepancies between accounts by exploring differences in role, vantage point and information access.
Session 2Identifying Systemic Contributors Versus Individual Blame
- Separate systemic contributors, such as staffing, scheduling and equipment design, from individual performance factors.
- Test whether a similar decision would have been made by any competent worker facing the same conditions.
- Identify organisational drift where local adaptations became normalised without management's awareness.
- Avoid recommendations that assign fault to an individual when the underlying conditions remain unaddressed.
04Turning Learning Into Organisational Change
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Writing Learning Reports That Influence Decision-Makers
- Draft a learning report structured around findings, contributing conditions and recommended system changes.
- Translate frontline language and stories into terms that resonate with senior decision-makers and budget holders.
- Present learning findings without naming individuals in ways that could expose them to blame or reprisal.
- Track which recommendations from previous learning reports were implemented and which were deprioritised.
Session 2Embedding Learning Teams Into the Safety Management System
- Integrate Learning Teams into the incident and near-miss reporting process as a standard response option.
- Train a pool of internal facilitators to run Learning Team sessions independently across different sites.
- Schedule periodic learning sessions on routine tasks, not only after incidents, to capture everyday adaptation.
- Measure the influence of Learning Teams on trust, reporting rates and the uptake of frontline recommendations.
What the participant receives
4 course modules
A structured syllabus
8 training sessions
across 5 days
32 detailed points
Applied, detailed content
Accredited attendance certificate
On completing the programme
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