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Behavioral approach one tool in ‘total-safety culture’

Goal is to get employees to care about, take action on safety

     Just as a carpenter can’t build a house with one or two tools, a business can’t achieve its safety goals with only one or two approaches, experts say. “Workplace safety has to be a comprehensive program [involving] policies and procedures, training and education, and then validation,” says Mark Haskins, manager for safety and health for Pfizer global manufacturing in Groton.

Rounding out a company’s circle of safety options is behavior-based safety, an approach to injury prevention that gets employees to take ownership of safety principles and practices.

Observing, correcting
     According to Anne French, Ph.D., senior partner of Safety Performance Solutions of Blacksburg, Vir., behavior-based safety requires management and employees to think differently about safety.

“When you’re coaching a sports team, do you do it by watching the scoreboard?” she asks. “No. You watch the actions of the players and how they’re playing the game. That’s what you need to do when it comes to workplace safety. You can’t just look at the incidence scoreboard and know how safe a company is.”

     One of the most effective tools of behavior-based safety is observation, French says. Employees routinely observe one another while working. A generic checklist guides the observer to focus on critical safety-related behaviors. Immediately afterward, the observer provides feedback to the observed, noting both safe and risky behaviors. The observer and the observed then problem-solve to identify ways to improve.

     The observation checklists are collected, compiled and graphed, and the resulting information is periodically reviewed with all employees. The information is analyzed to identify areas for follow-up action. And targeted areas are pursued using a problem-solving process.

     The key question that gets answered through behavior-based safety is: “How do we get people to care enough about safety that they’re willing to act on it?” French says. For instance, she explains, if an employee is not using the safety guard on a piece of equipment, “someone should ask that person why.”
Behavior-based safety puts those people who are at risk of accident (line workers, for instance) in the driver’s seat when it comes to safety. Those employees will notice unsafe behavior, document it and take action to correct it.

     Pfizer’s Haskins says behavior-based safety works because “people become more involved in identifying a risk, rather than just walking by.” At Pfizer, he says, employees are not only observing their own day-to-day behaviors and working to solve risks, they’re also helping to change the behavior of some independent contractors. “People will talk to a contractor about what is safe when they see them doing something that isn’t.”

     Pfizer’s employees are even carrying the principles over to situations at home, he says. “I’ve had some feedback about people who will no longer use their weed whackers in their yards without protective eye gear.”

‘Total-safety culture’
     For behavior-based safety to work, you need a “total safety culture,” says French. That culture has four characteristics:

  • All employees hold safety as a value.
  • Each individual feels responsible for their own and co-workers’ safety.
  • Each individual is willing and able to “go beyond the call of duty” on behalf of the safety of others.
  • Each individual routinely uses safe practices for the benefit of others.

     “A total-safety culture requires continual attention to the person, the environment and the behavior,” says French.