I'm a Human Factors Engineer who works in a medium-sized company which specializes in the design and integration of command, control, and communication systems. My background is in Industrial Engineering (B.S.) with specialized training in Human Factors Engineering (M.S. through Industrial Engineering).
We are a human factors engineering group responsible for all human factors activities at our company. Our responsibilities range from design to evaluation on anything from hardware to software to systems. Organizationally, we are part of the "Specialty Engineering" group which is part of the Systems Engineering department, which in turn reports to Engineering.
The bottom line is that our group does not practice human factors engineering to the extent that it should. Most of our work tends to be evaluative and is based on subjective judgment as opposed to empirical analysis. To improve the nature of our work, I need to expand the expectations of the rest of the company as to what human factors engineering can offer. There's a fairly common misperception that all we do is evaluate knobs, buttons, and layouts. By educating people on what human factors engineering is all about, I hope that people will get a greater understanding of how products with user interfaces should be designed and how the human factors group should be utilized to aid the process. Additionally, our group has traditionally been associated only with hardware. I'm trying to create an expectancy that human factors applies just as much to software.
For the most part, I've employed a grassroots approach. Our group has developed a reputation for quality work which results in a relationship of mutual respect between myself and other engineers I've worked with. I've taken advantage of this relationship to "sell" the importance of human factors engineering. I've especially focused my efforts on colleagues working on software projects.
A lot of new projects have just started and as a result, we've begun to focus our efforts on these project managers by proposing human engineering effort for them (at the level that we feel is actually appropriate). Because this level is generally different than their expectations, we spend a good amount of time justifying the effort which in turn goes a long way in educating them of the need for substantial human factors effort.
We plan to actively increase our "marketing" effort at a company-wide level through articles in company newsletters, the development of a lunchtime seminar, the development of an intra-net web page.