Posted By Andrew Bruce Heron I was very sceptical regards BBS and to be honest a complete unbelieve.This was until after my first 6 months with Chevron in Angola I seen the benefits. One of the main problems with accident prevention is that managers do not communicate with the worker in most cases and must to increase morale and give advice and support. Therefore increasing safety awareness further. I have encouraged this in Yemen, India, and Angola on site with all managers. I have seen incident rates in construction decrease with this philosophy adopted and the barriers between class evaporate which many of us say do not exist but do and in all cultures where I have worked. The people carrying out the work need a voice which is heard by site management as well as HSE who I encourage to adopt a behavioural approach to safety and not a blame culture of punishment which must be put into extinction to benefit all. As regular readers of IOSH SHP Magazine know, I’ve decried the use of punishment in professional correspondence. Punishment does work when the undesirable behaviour is followed by a soon, certain, and sizable punitive consequence. However, it’s usually impossible to administer this kind of contingency, especially in a work setting. And, even when punishment can be implemented appropriately, it can do more harm than good, as Drs. Jon Bailey and Mary Burch emphasize in their 2006 book, thinking like a Behaviour Analyst. Punishment promotes aggression; links negative effect to the punisher, and can disengage the punished person from an entire work process. Furthermore, the negative emotions promoted by punishment can spread to other workers and work settings. In his 2005 book, Praise for Profit, Jerry Pound starts his critique of punishment with this memorable quote from Jack Welch, “When people make mistakes, the last thing they need is discipline: It’s time for encouragement and confidence building.” When it comes to safety, it’s critical to learn from near hits and injuries, whether they resulted from mistakes or calculated risks. Punishment, incorrectly referred to as “discipline” in industry, will severely stifle the type of open and frank conversations needed for this kind of learning. However, when conversation following an undesirable incident is viewed as corrective feedback and leads to observable change in process behaviours and/or environmental conditions, beneficial learning and intrinsic reinforcement are the rewards that increase the quantity and quality of future safety-improving conversation. My two favourite quotes are below-: Write peoples accomplishments in stone, and their faults in the sand.”Benjamin Franklin “Everyone has room to improve, and if you have an environment where people can look at criticism as a gift from a friend, it makes improvement easier to handle.”Hal Rosenbluth. I would enjoy comments on everyone's thoughts on BBS as this I believe if managed well is a core value to success for all.