Posted By Mark Simpson Would appreciate some very swift & concise opinions on signage at site entrances that display things like days/hours since last accident. (the objective of having them, their effectiveness, how you perceive the data etc.)

Posted By Frank Hallett Hi Raymond - I'm sure that you didn't you really mean to say:- "I personally do like Behavioural Based interventions such as you describe for the following reasons". I totally agree with the remainder of your comments however. This type of initiative for motivation has an extremely common tendency to act in reverse to the stated intention. Frank Hallett

Posted By Jasonjg I can only speak from my own experiences at employee level I think you will find that many employees are now of the suspicion that is all huff and puff if not backed up with other more visual and closely related commitments to safety. Expect to see small admiration, appreciation, and plenty of criticisms. However much of this can be related to high turnover within the business so dont take my word on it. As I am still usually employed on a casual basis in many average manufacturing roles I have seen many different responses to such schemes from outright scepticism to over the top "I cant do that because I have not been trained to sweep a floor". Of all the different types of incentives, I have to say that I once went upon a site, as a contractor. The site was running a BS scheme and the results seemed to really pay off. This was a no matches or lighter type of site and a truckie decided to ignore this rule. In producing his lighter in the smoking room full of normal employees, he was in not so many polite words told to get back to the security shed and turn it in. That was a shock seeing such actions from employees rather than management. I guess it was money well spent for them. I have to be honest here and say I have never really seen any such similar self-enforcements of safety by employees since nor before. I think it was not long after this, I decided to get more involved in safety. I think I may take up BS one day as I am sure it has lots to offer.

Posted By Ian Waldram Traditionally such signs relate only to Lost Time injuries, HSE have published lots of advice as to why measuring only that statistic is too simplistic - so why decide to bring only that to eveyone's attention? I was involved with a major construction project where the management team agreed that H&S was as important as cost, schedule, etc. but then wanted to put up such a sign. My response was that if they were prepared also to display costs vs budget and whether work was ahead of or behind schedule, I could see no problem! They quickly decided to forget the idea. On some sites, there's a feeling that signs like this show management commitment. However, no one believes that unless it's backed up by visible leadership too, including consistently engaging workers in discussion and tapping into their ideas for improvement, as well as management's - and if that's really visible to all, why bother with a sign!

Posted By Jerry Lucey From experience I have found that such signage discourages personnel from reporting accidents/ incidents and can be counterproductive. Accidents/ incidents are generally not good key performance indicators as they are based on reactive data and can be misguiding as one unfortunate incident can greatly distort the true picture of how a company is performing on health and safety and can be a huge disincentive for those who may be putting in the effort. I would be interested in knowing if any companies/ organisations have identified KPIs based on proactive data where effort and performance are identified and displayed this at the entrances to their sites/ factories and how this impacted on the performance of the company. I would certainly think that there is an opportunity to improve safety culture with the correct data being displayed.

Posted By Raymond Rapp Frank et al You are quite correct I did mean - I do NOT like BBS. Silly ol' me. Anyway, I would like to take this opportunity to tell you all a true story. I went for an interview a couple of years ago. Whilst I was waiting in reception I read all the very impressive certificates, such as 100,000 man hours without an accident blah blah blah. During the course of the interview the subject of the committment of the organisation to health and safety surfaced. I remarked on all the impressive certificates on display. The response was,'we don't have accidents.' They know the rules, if they break them, that's it, they are sacked, no second chances'. I replied, 'assuming of course they are still alive!' No, I never got the job!!!! Apologies for the slight diversion from the original thread, however, their is a subtle point to story. Ray