Can Behaviour Based Safety programs improve on your safety performance? BBS, or Behavior Based Safety, if implemented correctly is a positive, employee-driven safety system that could be highly effective in improving a company's safety performance.
It is based on the claim that all injuries and occupational illnesses are preventable and can be managed and that the overwhelming majority of injuries and illnesses are the result of "unsafe acts" by workers.
The success of this concept hinges on creating and sustaining a safety culture where each person feels directly responsible for his/her own, and his/her work colleagues' safety.
Each worker will use personal safety processes to influence safe behaviour to prevent accidents or near misses.
Responsibility is vested on each worker to ensure that one works safely by observing safe work practices and providing observations, feedback, and problem solving to one's fellow colleagues on work safety.
Although "behavior based safety" is being promoted as a modern concept, it actually originated in the 1930's and 1940's with the work of H.
W.
Heinrich at the Travelers Insurance Company.
At that time the "research" that he did on thousands of insurance and injury/illness reports written by corporate supervisors, came to a conclusion that the workers, so-called "man failure" in the jargon of the time, was to be blamed for 88% of the industrial accidents.
Managers were delighted with behavior based safety because it shifts responsibility for health and safety to the workers and does not require significant change in the work process, engineering design or management system.
Behavior based safety is less expensive because management can use current workers to identify hazards rather than employing health and safety professionals.
However, if we analyse our workplaces, we will find that many hazards are present there.
These hazards are the elements that actually pose a risk to the workers.
Any worthwhile injury or illness prevention measure should start with a risk assessment of the workplace first.
Hazards that can be found when working with chemicals, gases, live energies, heights, machines, and even the environment should be eliminated through engineering control and safeguards.
Unfortunately, very often high cost is involved in making it safer for the workers.
Many companies prefer to use administrative control to reduce some of the risk.
Some recognise the risk, but can only provide personal protective equipment for their workers.
These measures, however, depend a lot on the people implementing and managing the controls.
With the high cost of labor these days, (and also high cost of implementing engineering controls) it's no wonder that management falls back on their "self-managing workforce" to manage their own safety! That's the "new" buzzword - BBS.
Knowing the constraints that companies have, how do we make BBS work to improve safety performance? BBS needs leaders at the top who can confidently empower leadership at the bottom without feeling threatened because it's about creating an informed culture where people understand the hazards and risks involved in their own operation - and doing something about it.
So in order for the staff to do that, they have to be trained or made aware of the various hazards in their workplace and what constitutes good and bad safety practices, so that they can identify and overcome threats to safety before they become an issue.
How to ensure they can identify safety concerns that can develop into accidents? Having plenty of reminders and illustrations of what might happen helps.
Safety messages can be printed on posters, stickers, mugs, pictures, cards, caps, T-shirts, bags, badges, magnets, buttons, and other decorative merchandise and placed strategically all over workplaces and offices.
They do help remind people and they can also become talking points for people to think, talk and live safety.
BBS also encourages a culture of self-policing, where the workforce knows and agrees on what is acceptable and what is unacceptable.
It is also a reporting culture where people are encouraged to voice safety concerns, analyzed and take appropriate actions.
But management must listen.
Definitely, it depends a lot on the knowledge and experience of the workforce.
Again, with the help of safety illustrations printed on common everyday objects like clocks, mousepads, clothing, etc.
that workers simply cannot avoid seeing, there can only be one outcome - people do not have to guess what a safety concern looks like - they are sure.
All in all, it's the people who make it work - people who know about safety deep down in their heart.
People who can recognize a safety violation when they see one.
People who know that taking shortcuts can lead to accidents and believe they can make a difference in influencing others.
People who eat, sleep and talk safety! In other words, in order to make BBS work, a lot of resources have to be focused on creating the right environment for safety education and safety awareness in order to nurture safe behavior, intervene on all risky behavior, and to achieve a total safety culture.
Even in a workplace environment where hazards are still present, it might help in some ways to improve your safety performance, if the management is genuinely interested in helping the employee work safely and have the Safety First mentality.