Behaviour-Based Safety
Interest continues to grow in health and safety programs that are "behaviour-based." What exactly does this mean?
Definitions
Behaviours are actions we can see and measure. Whether behaviours are repeated or not depends on their consequences. Actions with positive results tend to be repeated. Actions with negative results tend to be avoided.
Safe behaviour must therefore be shown to yield benefits. These benefits will in turn reinforce the actions that produced them. In this way, safety becomes a habit.
On jobsites, positive results can include recognition from management, respect from co-workers, safety awards, and, in some cases, incentive programs.
These are the responses that encourage, reward, and reinforce safe behaviour.
Observation
Changes in behaviour begin with observation. By observing workers performing a certain job or using a certain tool, it's possible to identify which steps in the process are safe and which involve unwarranted risk.
Observations can then be used to develop checklists for assessing health and safety performance. Are jackhammer operators wearing eye and hearing protection? Do workers tie off when guardrails are temporarily removed?
Reinforcement
Whether by their peers or supervisors, it's important that employees be recognized for doing the safe thing. This helps to reinforce the desired behaviour.
Reinforcement must be consistent and personal. In some way, the safe behaviour must be made worthwhile to people, not in general but in immediate terms. In most cases this amounts to recognition and encouragement from fellow workers and supervisors.
Mixed Signals
To make health and safety a habit, the message from management must be clear and consistent. The objective in reinforcing correct behaviour is to change actions. That can't happen when workers receive mixed signals.
Management may claim to have a strong commitment to health and safety, for instance, but provide defective equipment or enforce a production schedule that can't be met without taking risks and cutting corners.
Full management commitment to health and safety means support as well as control.
Worker Involvement
The business of identifying correct behaviour, determining appropriate procedures, and reinforcing health and safety on the job should involve the workforce. People familiar with the work can help to determine how it needs to be done safely and efficiently.
By conducting observations or reviewing videotapes taken on the job, workers can help to evaluate what's right and wrong, then develop guidelines and checklists accordingly.
Development should
- identify tasks that involve frequent injuries or the potential for severe injuries
- determine potential hazards
- analyze how the task is currently done and what equipment is used
- break the task down into a sequence of steps
- create a checklist covering the steps
- ensure that procedures are realistic and workable.
Involving workers from the start helps to ensure compliance later. It also creates a sense of "ownership," strengthening personal responsibility and commitment to the program.
Knowing versus Doing
Just because we know how to do a job safely doesn't mean that we do it safely.
The difference can depend on whether compliance is imposed from above or generated from below. When workers provide each other with feedback on health and safety performance, reinforcing positive actions and correcting negative, changes in behaviour can be more long-lasting and effective than those resulting from training or enforcement alone.
Instruction and supervision are often cited as methods of improving safety. But safe behaviour may not outlast the training program or may disappear when the foreman isn't watching.
Some of the most effective behaviour-based programs depend on peers. People who share the same workplace and perform the same work can be a powerful influence in fostering and reinforcing safe behaviours. These are the people who can encourage and coach one another.
Construction
Certain features of behaviour-based programs have been developed and implemented with industrial workplaces in mind. The programs depend on a relatively stable workforce employed by a single company in the same location over time. Crews working together every day at fixed workstations that can be monitored in a plant or mill may be more suitable to a behaviour-based approach than the transient workforce, shifting jobsites, solo tradesmen, and constantly changing projects encountered in construction.
But contractors reviewing health and safety programs should consider a couple of behaviour-based points.
Objectives. Set realistic objectives. As the first goal in a health and safety program, "zero injuries" is not practical for most companies. In fact, goals based on recorded injuries or compensation costs should be set only later. Initial goals might include the percentage of safe behaviours observed using checklists or the number of changes implemented to improve health and safety in certain well-defined tasks.
Expectations. By demonstrating a consistent commitment to health and safety, management generates expectations in the workforce, especially when employees are involved in development from the start. These expectations include not only what management expects but what workers expect of each other. Our basic tendency to conform, to seek approval from the group, can be a powerful force in accident prevention, encouraging and reinforcing positive acts. As a result, employees come to regard safety as both the end and the means of their workplace behaviour.
