June 2, 2026
10:30AM - 11:30AM

Industrial Health Track

The Workforce We Designed for No Longer Exists

Speaker: David Wilbur

Across high-risk industries, incidents are still blamed on human error even as the workforce those assumptions were built for quietly disappears. As experienced workers exit, technology speeds up decision-making, and AI reshapes how work gets planned and done, variability is increasing not because people are less capable, but because systems are changing faster than our learning models can keep up. This session reframes human error as a system signal, not an individual failure.

Using Vetergy’s Human Performance Model, it explores how design, organizational pressures, leadership signals, and adaptive capacity shape exposure risk and judgment. Participants will look at where leaders have real leverage today: shifting from behavior control to system stewardship, from compliance to learning agility, and from hindsight explanations to system designs that reliably produce sound judgment in real operating conditions.