Rank: Forum user 
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This I have found has always been a problematic area as how do you as a health and safety professional manage this? Now you can use the policing approach with strict discipline (I.e. failure to follow site safety rules means removal from site). Or the coaching approach of teaching individuals the benefits of good health and safety. Or a mix of the two or even a totally different approach?
What works best in your opinion.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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I don't know either, but I suspect it is a combination of interventions. The problem I have with BS is what happens when a supervisor, manager or even a senior manager deliberately violates the rules - does he/she get thrown off site? I think we know the answer to that. It is all too easy to throw a lowly operative off site and get another. Alas there must be consistency otherwise the whole concept loses credibility.
Then of course there are underlying factors which either seduce people into unsafe acts or an environment which tolerates sub-standard practices. How do you factor these into the equation? Personally, I do not like to focus on any one specific issue, BS or otherwise, it's just too easy to take your eye off the ball.
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Rank: Super forum user
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Firestar967
It's interesting how you label 'policing' and 'coaching' as if they are standard styles of intervention. The model of 'six category intervention' developed by John Heron is a more comprehensive model which facilitates flexibility and firmness.
In relation to the specific violations you refer to, there's no valid objective reason why anyone with a managerial title (or 'proprietor) can be exempted from sanctions. The root issue is not 'behavioural safety' but of the values the leaders of the organisation.
A coaching style that you may find worth examining is known as 'solution focused coaching', about which Anthony Grant at the University of Sydney has done some useful research and produced a 12-item inventory which I can let you have.
If you devise valid measures of safe behaviour - and of relevant aspects of the physical and cognitive environment, drawing on ergonomic science - you can avoid many of the paradoxes associated with 'behavioural safety', a brand that may now be past its selling date, at least in the UK due to the 2010 'fatwa' about it on the TUC website.
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Rank: Super forum user
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Firestar967
Rereading how you frame your question, it appears that your root problems are not really about the 'behavioural safety' brand but about the validity and scope of measures you are using day in, day out not only of behaviour but also of other physical and cognitive dimensions of safety management.
Unless and until you have adequate processes for measuring the phenomena you want to manage, neither the best 'policing' nor 'coaching' in the world are likely to deliver consistently high returns on investment of resources in safety management.
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Rank: Forum user
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Interesting that you think that this is my opinion. Behavioural coaching was introduced as a way of improving the culture of the organisation I work for. However, I found this approach limited in my opinion, hence the question on this forum. The policing method I hear a lot about, mostly from the disgruntled employee both operative and supervisor. Like you said there is more than one method or style of achieving a good health and safety culture and agreed it is based on achieving a measured performance.
End of the day the upper management is sold on this idea and when it is not achieving it is because it is not being pushed hard enough. Also I'm just an adviser so my opinion doesn't count.
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Rank: Super forum user
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Of material published on coaching relating to behavioural change, there's a fair amount of variety on validated studies in Australia.
The most credible coaching interventions for work situations are those, including but not limited to 'solution focused coaching', where what you refer to as 'pushing' is methodically measured so that all concerned can check openly what's actually going on.
As far as I've been able to establish, nothing comparable has been published in the UK or USA that's relevant to safety at work.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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KieranD wrote:
In relation to the specific violations you refer to, there's no valid objective reason why anyone with a managerial title (or 'proprietor) can be exempted from sanctions. The root issue is not 'behavioural safety' but of the values the leaders of the organisation.
The ease (or otherwise) of replacing the individual concerned is a valid objective reason. You might consider it misguided or wrong, but it is valid, and it can be objective. If excluding one particular employee causes the company a small degree of inconvenience, and excluding another risks bankrupting the business, that is a very valid, very objective reason not to exclude the second.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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FS,
I have no answer to your question but if you want to delve into BS and get a better understanding suggest you look at "RyderMarsh" there is lots of good stuff on the website.
Also Tim Marsh's book "Affective Safety management" is worth buying.
I'm a bit of a fan of Tim - nice to come across a Psychologist who inhabits the real world.
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