The Contributing Factors of Behavior-Based Safety Failures

In the behavioral safety arena, multiple methodologies argue for a dominant position in the marketplace, resulting in confusion; closely-held, magical formulas; and an often-dangerous resolve to do it yourself.

It is hard to decipher which approaches (methodology vs. home-grown) have created sub-optimized results, or in some case, failures. Both often result in substantial barriers to future attempts. With the experience of partnering with hundreds of organizations to break past these previously established barriers, it is hopeful that this article will provide some insight into commonly found misconceptions and approaches. This will enable you to ensure your path leads to positive transformation, rather than failure.

FORCED EFFORT OR INVOLVEMENT

Behavioral safety processes that force involvement typically result in “voluntolds” teams and less-than-desirable levels of engagement and safety improvement. How much passionate and willing discretional energy do you provide to paying your taxes every year? If a person is working towards an accomplishment because he has to, rather than because he wants to, expect efforts that achieve minimal expectations, rather than efforts that work toward exceeding them.

This also is true when organizations require a certain number of observations to be accomplished by every employee. Individuals who do not want to be involved might not leave the person being observed with a positive experience, thus perpetuating further negativity towards the process. Remember this principle: Forced change almost always is temporary. When you and the force go away, so does the change.

A “GOTCHA” APPROACH

Several processes either do not announce the observation or do not ask permission to conduct an observation of common practice. These processes have the misguided impression that spying is a better approach to see true common practice. Clandestine human intelligence often is a necessary function within governments against other governments. It is not a tool to create cultures that break the “us vs. them” mentality sometimes found in the workplace or encourage excellence in any areas of operational performance.

The effective processes either ask permission or, at minimum, announce the observation to make those to be observed aware. The goal is to see if it is possible to take vital precautions. If it is, and we are certain these precautions represent what a safe work environment looks like, then encourage the person to continue taking the specific precautions. If they are not being taken, find out why.

INFORMATION USED FOR DISCIPLINE

Behavior-based safety processes that are effective collect insightful information into common practices of work activities. This insight helps determine how to help people work as safely as possible. How is your data used? Some processes have resulted in employees receiving discipline for activities observed during behavioral observations. This often is a gray area in many processes and requires careful consideration.

Organizations need safety rules, and they receive mandates for — and are held accountable for — enforcing these rules. This responsibility, however, often lies with those in management. This is why many effective processes ask employees to conduct the behavioral observations, while asking the supervisors to play a very specific, customized support role, based on the trust levels within the organizational culture. These effective employee-led behavioral processes focus on discretional behaviors, and the management systems focus on the mandatory behaviors. (There also are opportunities to teach the observation and coaching skills to supervisors, allowing them to become safety coaches; however, take care to ensure the processes are separated if trust issues exist.)

Asking employees to observe and collect data for both mandatory and discretionary behaviors on a checklist is fraught with complications. While the responsibility of an employee who witnesses another employee violating a safety rule doesn't go away, what is he to do if this is witnessed during an observation? My personal recommendation: tear up the card, stop the observation and intervene.