Behavior-based safety (BBS) has become a well known and frequently used method for reducing accidents and injuries. The theories behind BBS date from at least as early as the 1940s, when unpublished army studies on the method were conducted. In the 1970s and 1980s, Professor Judith Komaki and others conducted early trials of the process of behavior observation and feedback that became the centerpiece of programs, most implemented in the 1990s and afterward.

Thousands of workplaces have adopted behavior-based or behavioral safety and the many offshoots it has spawned. The systems offered by providers help businesses determine the need, teach the method and apply lessons learned. In this White Paper, we look at trends as well as successes and flaws. Three experts were interviewed: a vice president of a large provider of BBS services, the top safety and health official of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA), and a college professor who has studied BBS and who helps employers establish BBS programs.

Don Groover, BEHAVIOR SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY, INC.

Behavioral Science Technology, Inc. (BST) is perhaps the most recognized name in behavior-based safety. The California-based company was founded in 1979 by Thomas Krause and Dr. John Hidley. According to corporate literature, "BST pioneered the application of behavioral science methods to safety?" To date, the firm has assisted some 1,500 sites in 50 countries through the patented Behavioral Advanced Performance Process. Its success in safety and health led BST to expand its offerings to assist businesses in other areas of human performance, including customer service, leadership, and productivity.

Vice president Don Groover has been with BST for about 15 years. Before he joined the company he hired it to implement a behavioral process at a manufacturing plant where he was employed. "I was an early adopter and still have not found an organization where this method is not applicable," he states. According to Groover, BST experienced significant growth after 1986, when "we started focusing more on getting employees at the wage role level engaged in safety."

What's kept employers, including some of the most visible companies in the world, coming back to BST is its inherent value, asserts Groover. "It gets started in organizations because employees who are underutilized are looking for ways to demonstrate their value to the organization. If they're bored and you give them an opportunity to focus on an area like safety, where everybody benefits, they step up and feel good about it because it works and they see it working." He is so confident of the method, he says it can even remain viable in an organization that is failing in many other key management areas.

'We've Changed'

"For a little company, we do a lot of research," observes Groover. Responding to the findings has led to additional adjustments at BST. One change has mostly eliminated the large-scale assessment of a client company's overall safety and health program that was formerly a first phase in establishing a BBS process. "What we found was that the assessment didn't really guide the organization," Groover says. "What they needed was a plan. We've changed the methodology to where we have about 20 percent planning and about 80 percent understanding the potential obstacles and landmines" a participating employer might face.

Another change is a greater concentration on what Groover calls the "back end of the process," that is, using the data that are uncovered. "Observation and feedback will only get you a defined amount of change. If you don't deal with the issues that are making it hard for people to do things the safe way, which you discover during observation, the process collapses." He explains that data use requires management to move away from searching for downstream indicators like accidents and start thinking upstream, in terms of exposures and prevention.

Groover offers the example of a manufacturing facility in which employees were required to work under a heavy, suspended load. As they conducted their observations, in keeping with the BST formula, this situation emerged as a significant risk. Employees strongly suggested a change, but the production manager said locating the workers under the load could not be altered without compromising production.

Unwilling to give up, the employees conducted a study and learned that moving employees to avoid the heavy load would cost a matter of minutes per day, not the hours the production manager predicted. Nine months after the change was implemented, a crane malfunctioned and the load fell to the ground. But no employees were around to be injured.

The Process Unfolds

The Behavioral Science Technology method begins with an orientation for key people whose buy-in is required for success. During the planning stage, the goal is to begin to expose more people to the ideas and develop a timeline for implementation. In situations that include a peer-to-peer (observation and feedback) component, a employee-based committee is created. Its job is to actually design and adapt the process to the needs of the site.

"One of the first challenges is to figure out what behaviors are getting people hurt," says Groover. This is done through a proprietary BST process known as identification of critical behaviors. These are extracted from "reports, nearmisses and common sense." Generally, the final list includes between 10 and 30 behaviors that are worked into a checklist. The next step is to teach a pilot group observation and feedback. Ultimately, a larger group of employees is trained. As part of the rollout, BST teaches how the data collected can be managed and used. Among findings that can emerge from the data review is the presence of a conflict in values between employees and their superiors. For example, observations may reveal that employees believe they must reach into live equipment to repair it or invoke the wrath of a supervisor for taking the time to turn off the equipment. Groover says the problem is not that the employee is misbehaving, but that a difference in values exists that can only be addressed by management. Other responses to findings could include changes in training, operations, or in the ways teams work together.

Listening to Labor

Organized labor has long been critical of the behavioral methods because they find fault with the worker rather than point up management flaws. BST's Groover acknowledges that his company has listened to these complaints and has made changes, including a greater emphasis on leadership. "There's a lot of validity to what they're talking about," he states. "And there are processes out there that in my opinion are totally inappropriate, such as companies that say because they've implemented a BBS process, they can get rid of their safety and health people."

Groover also issues a thumbs-down to programs that are punitive and those that rely heavily on incentives for conducting observations. Although he states that "there's not a place for discipline or incentives in our process," Groover recognizes that this is done. He cites data that show that "incentivizing" observations may increase the quantity of information collected but has a negative effect on its quality.

To learn more about the BST approach, and to read about successful applications, visit the company's website at http://www.bstsolutions.com.

Jim Frederick, USWA

Jim Frederick, assistant director of health, safety, and the environment for the Steelworkers, acknowledges that large BBS providers have expressed a concern with some of the issues raised by organized labor. "For example, BST has changed what it is selling, focusing less on worker behavior than it did to now look at the underlying factors that are driving the observable behaviors." Although these changes are being expressed at the corporate level, Frederick has not seen significant differences at the site level.

Recognizing that BBS programs are in place at many unionized worksites, USWA is currently conducting a survey of its members. The goal is to learn the extent of BBS programs in place and the effect of such programs on union safety and health representatives.

Other Concerns

Among Frederick's chief concerns is the issue of underreporting at worksites that have established BBS programs. In today's challenging economy, corporate leaders are pushing for greater accountability for costly injuries and illnesses, he explains. As a result, management turns to solutions like behavior-based safety to help drive down rates. But Frederick says the programs often fail to influence severity, nor do they result in changes in the way safety and health is managed. And when members of a team or supervisors frown on reporting, the results can be especially negative.

Frederick is not a big fan of incentives, but he recognizes that getting tools, jackets, and other premiums for completing observations is attractive to some union members. "One thing we've identified from the survey is that there has been a fair amount of dissension within local union membership." Unionized workers may think that as long as they avoid injury and get a chance for a sizable prize, everything's just fine. "But I want to make sure our members understand that it's the unreported injuries that are the problem--the hazards that are never fixed," says Frederick. He adds that the issue is complicated in tough times because many companies that fund incentive programs claim they're out of money when it comes to making safety-related improvements.

Dr. Thomas E. (Ted) Boyce, CENTER FOR BEHAVIOR SAFETY LLC

Dr. Ted Boyce is a professor of psychology at the University of Nevada. He is also president of the Center for Behavior Safety LLC, a consulting group that specializes in behavioral solutions. The center serves primarily heavy industry, mining, and construction clients. Like Groover of BST, Boyce stresses the importance of leading indicators and shifting the focus from outcomes like recordable incidents and lost-time accidents.

Boyce's method of observation and feedback begins with an on-site assessment--an effort to look at the facility's injury and illness history and patterns. "Then I conduct a visit where I interview employees at all levels. I do this instead of the more popular safety-culture surveys, which are pencil-and-paper exercises. I found that those are not extremely predictive." And he adds that many employers find it hard to justify the cost of a written survey.

The next step for Boyce involves gathering an upper-level management group to whom he explains the process and from whom he seeks buy-in for the work that will follow. Giving them a foundation provides reassurance that nobody will be threatened by the new process. Next, a steering committee is formed; it's the group that will actually implement the process. Boyce recommends that it be made up of mostly hourly employees but also include those empowered to make decisions. In a unionized workplace, labor representatives should serve as well.

He conducts a 3-day workshop with the team. The outcome is the actual structure of the process, including a critical-behavior checklist to be used for observations as well as a marketing strategy to gain support for the process. A series of workshops follows during which the steering committee introduces and explains the process to a larger group of employees.

Process Highlights

Boyce believes that observations should be conducted voluntarily. "There have been some concerns that when people are asked to record information about others' behavior they may fake it, especially if they are going to get a benefit or reward. When we keep it voluntary, we've found that those who participate do so because they believe in the process and are more likely to give accurate information."

The number of observations expected is left to the steering committee to determine. It's typical for observers to conduct one or more observations a week at the beginning. But with training and "a little bit of motivation," Boyce says it's common to get 25 percent to 30 percent of the employee population conducting observations. The motivation might include, for example, a celebration if the employee group reaches a higher level of regular observations, or a half-hour off the clock for company-provided refreshments, or small material rewards. But Boyce prefers positive, individual recognition over prizes.

He recalls one company that had been using reprimands for employees caught working unsafely. "I [recommended] that they might want to consider some formal recognition for participating in the BBS program. So they decided to create an official-looking letter of recognition signed by the site manager and copied to their files." Not surprisingly, this positive counterpart to the reprimand was well received. Positive reinforcement for participation in the BBS process is especially welcome at sites at which downsizing is occurring and employees may be unsure of their future status.

When Rules Are Broken

"One thing I stress," says Boyce, is "not blaming the employee. Not all at-risk behaviors are deliberate acts of wanting to break safety rules. Often there are very good reasons." These fall into a few categories. One is that equipment needed to do the task safely is not available. Another possibility is that the equipment creates an inconvenience or discomfort that is more negative in workers' minds than the threat of injury. A third reason is informal pressures, like a performance-oriented culture in which employees are praised for saving time and taking shortcuts.

Once it's discovered, through observations, where behavioral problems lie, they can be attacked through one of several means. These include motivation that helps employees see a greater benefit in staying safe than working at risk; changes to the physical environment, including workstation design, and availability of resources; and people-oriented changes such as better training.

Behavior-based approaches work, Boyce maintains, because they help a workplace move toward prevention. He offers an example of a manufacturing facility in which back strains had become common. Lifting, pushing, and pulling were the suspected culprits. The employee team created a checklist that focused on these activities and confirmed the suspicion. It was further learned that most problems occurred at the very end of the line, where employees were placing the product in boxes, then lifting the boxes and placing them onto a conveyor for loading onto trucks.

Observation revealed that instead of changing the placement of their feet, workers were twisting their torsos to move the boxes onto the conveyor. Performing the task this way for 10 hours a day was having some nasty consequences. "The team was creative and looked at various solutions, including some sort of incentive for changing behavior." But one member of the group saw that a simple redesign of the station could change the problem further upstream. He designed a $100 fix-a line attachment that transports the boxes to the conveyor, permitting employees to avoid the risky twist. Observes Boyce: "It was a simple solution that had been overlooked for years because there was no process in place to fix it. The effect of the behavior-based process is that we now start noticing these things and looking for solutions. It's not about blaming the worker; it's looking at the situation to see what is contributing to the at-risk behavior." In fact, Boyce likes to say that the process takes one from fault-finding to fact-finding. Visit http://www.cbsafety.com/ for details about Boyce's work at the Center for Behavior Safety. Also, a great deal of general information is about behavioral solutions and service providers is available on the Internet.