Hi all,

just wondering if anyone has an opinion on use of CCTV to alter behaviours within the workforce. We have recently installed significant new CCTV coverage throughout our manufacturing plant of which now provides considerable coverage which we did not previously have. Now we are able to review post incident events and see what actually happened and the build up to our numerous minor incidents. I'm reading some articles recently, i think about 'nudge theory' and i thought the cctv could also be used in this form. My thoughts are, if we communicate to the workforce that we will review CCTV regularly this could act as the 'police man' effect to ensure they behave safely and dont take shortcuts when not being directly supervised by management. We are only starting our approach to building a positive safety culture but at present we are firmly positioned in the dependant stage of the Bradford Curve and rely heavily on management enforcement. We also have not completed training for our management leadership team yet so i need something to help push a compliance culture until we have progressed sufficently within our culture. Does anyone know of any issues with communicating the fact that CCTV is in place to workforce?

Thanks

Hopefully you have registered the installation.
And put adequate signage that it is installed.
And that you have notified the workforce that they can, on receipt of the relevant payment (not more than 10 quid) have receipt of the "data" (video) on themselves.
And then you have to decide on the length of time you intend to store the data.....legally you can only keep them " for as long as necessary to meet the purpose of recording them"
And then there is the issue of who has access to the data......in your case it seems every Thomas, Richard and Harriet......
You need a serious discussion of exactly what it is for.....and then legal advice as to whether you can use it for that !

We had a programme where the monitoring team would call the site if they saw a breach of safety such as people not wearing Hi vis or doing something they should not be doing. The site would then send a manager to discuss the breach with the person. It worked quite well and wasnt big brother as we did not get that much reported.

Safetyman

Firstly, congratulatons on recognising the vital importance of feedback within the upgrading of safety culture.

Secondly, it would be a shame if misjudgments and/or confusion abou technology as an aid to feedback were to aid your effort to upgrade your culture. There's no need to allow it to get bogged down in Data Protection or other important legal safeguards to employees.

Thirdly, one of the reasons that safety culture so often gets bogged down is the divorce of 'safety culture' from the broader culture of the organsation; Dominic Cooper's 1998 book is one of the very, very few that link safety culture with the larger system of organisational culture. In this context, I read your statement: ' we are firmly positioned in the dependant stage of the Bradford Curve and rely heavily on management enforcement. We also have not completed training for our management leadership team yet so i need something to help push a compliance culture" and suspect that setting such a very low ceiling may become a recipe for painful and possibly failure.

Fourthly, you have a far greater prospect of succeeding if you ensure management leadership development is dovetailed with initiatives towards an 'organisational efficacy' (OE) culture, of which safety culture is an integral component. You can download the 17-statement tool for diagnosing the level of 'organisational efficacy' culture at present in your organisation, along with the six-point rating scale in the article by its author, James Bohn, in HRDQuarterly, Autum (Fall) 2010; then you can work on one or more of the three dimensions of OE culture most critical at this stage of your organsiational renewal, and include feedback about each of the two classes of non-compliance (errors and violations) legally and constructively as components of change.

Fifthly, introducing the OE perspective competently kicks any possible shadow of 'Big Brother' properly out of sight, out of mind and out of any possible entry to your setup.

One possible way of using technology appropriately as part of a coherent and legitimate way of gathering feedback on levels of safe/unsafe behavour is to design, conduct and evaluate a scientific experiment about its use.

Get two matching groups doing comparable jobs, so that the experimental variable lies in the use of CCTV and use of a team of two or more scientificaly-trained observers for the same timeperiods. The dependent variable consists of both the amount and quality of production and the number and gravity of safety errors and violations.

Feedback includes not only the quantitative data but also the qualitative data consisting of the learning of the operatives, of their team leaders, of the observers, of relevant managers and of the safety professonal overseeing it all.

Data tell their own story, much more validly than dogma. It's not impossible that operatives monitored by CCTV may be those most enthusiastic about its positive benefits.

In effect, the experiment can be used as part of the development of constructive, cost-beneficial safety culture, as well as a means of determining the pros and cons of using CCTV.