Posted By Raymond Rapp
Frederick,

Basically as I see it there are two distinct 'camps,' those that support BBS (industry) and those that oppose it (unions). Somewhere between the two lies reality. Personally, I am not so keen because BBS or at least the American version appears to have too much emphasis on operator error (active errors) and I do not like the use of 'incentives' which can lead to the non-reporting of accidents.

Indeed, one of your antipidean colleagues Hopkins (2002) has written a interesting paper regarding BBS and what he describes as a variant of BBS ie risk-awareness. Like Hopkins I am wary of fads within health and safety, BBS may appear to be the Philosopher's stone but upon further investigation the concept is inherently flawed. Safety in my view cannot be conveniently 'pigeon holed' to fit one doctrine or another, it is far too complex. So there you have it blue, UK style.

Regards

Ray

Posted By Adrian Watson
Dear Frederick,

I was interested to read the postings on your thread, http://www.sia.org.au/fo...wthread.php?threadid=351 about Behaviour Based Safety (BBS). Like all things, BBS has both good and bad points. The good being that it focuses employees upon their behaviours and the bad that it may distract employers from their duties to provide competent employees, safe systems of work, safe equipment, and a safe place of work; and that it may be used as a mechanism to abdicate responsibility as well as assign blame to employees.

My problem with BBS is that some psychologists sell it as the safety panacea, because as they state 96.4% of accidents are caused by people and if people didn't act unsafely then there wouldn't be accidents. This is rubbish, and belies that fact that 100 % of accidents are caused by something and if you look hard enough you can always find, with the benefit of hindsight, an act or omission that somebody should or should not have done that either caused, contributed to, or failed to prevent the accident.

Sane rational people, generally, do not set out to injure themselves. People do not cause accidents; they contribute to accidents! Their acts and omissions, do not exist in a vacuum, they exist simultaneously within psychosocial and physical environments, and it is the interaction of all three that combine to produce incidents that result in accidents. Therefore, anything done to improve safety must take account of both the psychosocial and physical environments as well as the behaviours of individuals.

Now I'm off my soapbox, I would like to make the point that if BBS is used by management to abdicate their responsibilities, then its part of the blame game and worthless; however, where it is used as part of the toolkit alongside systems approach to management, ergonomics, industrial hygiene, designed in safety, engineering, human error reduction, etc then it adds value and should be considered and used if and when it is appropriate.

Good articles on the pro's and con's of BBS are contained in Innovations in Safety Management: Addressing Career Knowledge Needs Fred A. Manuele and Safety Culture and Effective Safety Management NSC.

Regards Adrian Watson

Posted By Merv Newman
I am strongly for BBS. In its place. It is not the univeral solution. first you have to put in place all the management, legal and working environment requirements of accident prevention. If you get all of that right, almost all that is left is behaviour. How do you change behaviour - ask the BBS people. I did, and now I know that it is simple and easy.

Forget the old "Unsafe acts and dangerouse situations" audits. Check out what is good. what are the best/prefered/safest behaviours. How can you recognise/reward/reinforce the good people ?

That is BBS. But, unfortunately, it does not come easy. You have to identify the people/groups who behave as required, and "reward" them.

When was the last time that YOUR boss congratulated you because you had done a good job ? When was the last time that YOUR boss reinforced your good behaviour/performance (apart from the annual appraisal)