Safety: the journey to where we are now
It's a safe assumption that most people in industry are interested in making the workplace safer. Many approaches have been tried, and most of them have shown at least some success. Here are just a few of the more prominent over the years:
- Surveillance – hiring several workers such as safety watchers to watch what others do and advise people seen breaking the rules, report the breach to management, or both.
- Penalties – a wide range is possible including fines, transfer from the work in question to other work which may be less rewarding, and (the ultimate sanction) dismissal
- Training – ensuring that safe working practices are taught on induction and in subsequent refreshers
- Guidance and procedures
All of those, valuable as they are, are external to the worker whose behavior the company seeks to make safer. They act on the worker; they don't become part of the worker and there is generally no overall assessment to ensure worker interactions with the work environment is analyzed to understand how the workplace could influence behaviors.
Behavioral-based safety, on the other hand, aims to operate inside the worker by reaching the levers that determine how each of us acts. It does so by taking into consideration that various aspects that can impact health and safety within a business such as culture (both organizational and personnel), overall knowledge, status of operations and general leadership styles influencing the decision-making processes within a business.
Total Safety Culture
As a football fan, I remember fondly watching the Ajax Amsterdam and Dutch football sides of the 1970's led by the famous Yohan Cruyff at the time. "Total Football" was the term given to their style. A reference to a tactical approach in which any outfield player can take over the role of any other player in a team.
The system allowed Ajax Amsterdam and subsequently the Dutch national team to achieve unparalleled success both domestically and internationally.
A key to their success was their ability to understand how every part of the team best interacts with the other and a strong consensus that every part of the unit is equally essential to the collective success.
A Total Safety Culture refers to an organization that fully integrates health and safety within it's operation and sets it as a keystone habit that provides a foundation for achieving its overall objectives.
It would be difficult to find an employer or employee who didn't endorse the idea of building a total safety culture. A total safety culture cannot exist until the people operating inside it see safety not just as something they have to think about but as a core element, a fundamental part of who they are. In a total safety culture, each individual takes responsibility for their own safety and the safety of everyone else on the site. And taking responsibility means doing so in a proactive way rather than sticking to laid-down procedures – looking out for danger and forestalling it rather than just following rules.
What is behavior-based safety?
At first glance, the answer to that question seems simple: it's safety that arises from the behavior of everyone connected with the site, from management on. But how is that to be achieved? A noticeboard at the entrance to a site giving the number of days since the last reportable accident or incident on that site is worth having because it reminds everyone crossing the threshold that safety is important and that accidents should be avoided. But it isn't behavior-based safety.
If research into why there has been no reportable accident or incident on the site in the past six months reveals that the absence is due to regular surveillance of the workforce and the installation of guards, safety rails and the like then that, too, has been worth doing. But it isn't behavior-based safety.
If the same research shows that the clean sheet is the result of beliefs and understandings about safe practice becoming internalized in the mind of every employee – that is behavior-based safety. Behavior-based safety is not about what people do – it's about why they do it. No site where the only reason for maintaining safety is obeying the rules (rules, let us remember, that have been put in place by others) will remain consistently safe. To achieve consistent safety, it's necessary for people to understand why they do what they do and to be motivated to behave safely at all times for their sake and the sake of those around them.
How does that internalization take place?
A number of things are necessary, and they involve management as well as workforce, but the most important is to achieve an understanding of why people do what they do. To take one simple example, a company employed several workers whose job was to operate acoustic drills. Acoustic drills can be loud, and prolonged exposure to the noise can damage hearing. The obvious answer is to train the workers to wear ear defenders. But the question is: why would any worker not wear ear defenders if they were trained to do so? The answer is that they may not understand the long-term consequences of not wearing them. Or they may find them uncomfortable. Or they may believe that wearing them makes it harder to communicate with colleagues. The BBS approach is to find out why people behave as they do and to address the underlying reasons rather than simply insisting on compliance.
The most effective behavior-based safety programs are those that involve the workforce in the design and implementation of the program. When workers are involved in identifying the behaviors that need to change and in developing the solutions, they are far more likely to internalize the safe behaviors. The program becomes theirs rather than something imposed on them by management.
Conclusion
Behavior-based safety is not a quick fix. It is a long-term commitment to changing the culture of an organization from one where safety is imposed from above to one where safety is internalized by every individual. It requires patience, consistency, and the involvement of everyone from the most senior manager to the newest employee. But the evidence is that, when it is done properly, it can and does make a real and lasting difference to safety performance.