Posted By Paul L Williams
Dear all,

I am in the process of starting a behavioural safety programme. I have trained the managers and team leader using the ABC approach. However I am now looking at the type of observational forms to use. The observations will be conducted by a selected member of the department who will be the called the "safety first" representive. They will be in the role for a week, wearing a yellow armband. The role is then rotated to another member of the department. The primary responsibilities for the safety first rep will be to work along side the departmental safety rep and with training undertake observations based on key basic behaviours. e.g, working at height, ppe, slips & trips, traffic routes etc. I was wondering if anyone else uses a form to log behavioural observations and whether it should be blank and the employee just fills out what they see or whether to use subheadings and guidance questions. Any feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks

Paul

Posted By Berg
Similar to Emyr

The observed categories can be targeted to specific behaviour or risk factors, to assist your specific needs.

Each category can then be brought under a broader defined category to enable statistical analysis.

The observation forms should be continually developed to reflect improvements, changes in the risk priorities.

There is no need to be tied down to a format or set of observations. Alot of the packages on sale tend to ensourage this to promote reliance.

Posted By Berg
ABC = Activiator (aka motivators), Behaviour, Consequence

Posted By Paul L Williams
Just to let you know about the "ABC" model I am using stands for;

Antecedents: the causal event (or trigger) preceding the behaviour. Examples of antecedents include rules, procedures, suitable tools/equipment, information, signage, skills, knowledge, training, etc.

Whilst antecedents are necessary to help trigger behaviour, their presence does not guarantee that a particular behaviour will occur or that it will be maintained over a period of time.

Behaviour: the observable thing that someone does or does not do. The presence of safety rules, does not ensure that safe behaviour will occur. This is the choice of the individual on whether they decide to follow the rules or not.

To maintain a required behaviour over time it depends on the consequences to the individual by following the rules or not.

Consequence: the outcome of the behaviour that influences the likelihood that it will be repeated. There are three main types of consequence that influence behaviour.

1. Positive reinforcement: reward for achievement, recognition, praise and positive feedback.

2. Negative reinforcement: this includes avoidance of pain, losses (including financial loss) and penalties / fines.

3. Punishment/ Extinction: this includes removal of benefits, disciplinary action, physical injury and feelings of guilt.

Thanks to everyone who has responded I really like the idea of a focus group to design the observation form as this will indeed get "buy in" from the workforce. What I intend on doing now is to get the workforce to design an observation form in teams during the training sessions and these can then be reviewed by a focus group to come up with the best idea.

Cheers

Paul

Posted By Dave Wilson
Very laudable however how did you get your company to buy into this, for, I assume, the every day H&S Chap/ette this is the stuff of consultants and professors.

What you trying to achieve? I would be very interested in the outcomes of what you are doing!

Posted By Berg
Dave's got a point, this is being made out to be some kind of in depth science which defeats the whole object of a process aimed at the worker at the sharp end.

I've sat through a 3 day course when 1 or less was quite sufficient. ££££££ for someone.

As long as the target group recognise how they can influence risks by their behaviour then it works. Improved workplace, stats and KPI's will naturally follow.

From experience it is a great way of promoting safety awareness, consultation etc.

Good luck with it anyhow.

Posted By Dave Wilson
Worker involvement is great, All the hard safety, great! but what about Management actually managing their dept and Safety management is part of that.

management - not just managers - are the leaders so get them to lead so how is this going to tie in with the behavioral programme, you got time scales to implement safety lapses as they are identified and TNA as well?

Posted By Merv Newman
Behavioural safety used to be likened to the unwed mother likely to be kicked out into the snow by an irate father.

Good to see it getting serious discussion and the depth of knowledge shown by respondents is also pretty good.

However, you all seem to be talking about the same style of BBS programme : Safe behaviours being defined by a steering group (with management participation, Observations made by managers or supervisors, results calculated on some statistical basis, 3 or more days training ...)

A different style of BBS programme involves the employees in defining the behaviours (15 to start, cut to 10 after base lining), management and then represent ants of involved work groups receive a half day training (including ABC and the four reinforcers/weakeners) A member of the work group, who will be the observer, 10 to 15 minutes per day, receives a little bit of extra training (half hour)

The observation scores are "binary" : "Yes, everyone observed behaved correctly today" = 1 or "No, at least one person observed today did not behave correctly" = 0

The third possibility is "X" meaning no example of a specified behaviour, safe or unsafe, was observed today. Example : defined safe behaviour is holding the handrail on stairs. If no-one uses the stairs during the observation period then the score is "X" and is not included in today's score.

The result for today is a simple percentage of "yes's" against the total number of behaviours observed.

And the global score for the week is again a simple percentage.

This kind of programme is designed to be administratively light and simple to run, with a maximum of employee involvement and ownership. The observer does most of the work with support from supervision and management.

Supervision and management are mostly involved in the "recognition, reward and reinforcement" areas.

So, to answer Paul's question : Our form has a list of the 10 safe behaviours on the left. Then there are six columns for the days of the week. Each column is divided into three for the three possible results for each behaviour : "yes", "no" or "not seen"

A final column, to the right, gives percentage scores for each behaviour and a global percentage for the week.

Paul, if you e-mail to the above address I can send you an example.

And, as you say, BBS is the third thing to do :

1 (or 2) Get your work environment as safe as reasonably practical.

2 (or 1) Get your safety management system working (which includes all that lovely legal stuff)

3 Then do BBS.

BBS is no substitute for a safe working environment and a good system of safety management. It is an add-on, but when you really want a top-down AND a bottom-up safety culture, you gotta do it.

Merv

Posted By Mike de Klerk
I got myself the book: "The Values-Based Safety Process" by Terry E. McSween.

you wont need another guide on how to do this.