Three years ago, Bill High had a problem that needed immediate attention. Accident rates at his company, Leatherman Tool Group, were increasing dramatically.
High had joined Leatherman, a Portland, Oregon-based manufacturer of popular multi-purpose pocket tools, in 1995 with the mandate of creating a company-wide safety program. Despite an extensive training initiative focused on rules, policies, procedures and general safety awareness, High noted an alarming increase – a whopping 44% per month – in the company's accident rate in early 2000.
To reverse this trend, High focused on the need to increase safety awareness. "We needed a way to increase safety awareness individually and drive home the point that safety is a shared responsibility," High explained. Though the task seemed as daunting as it was urgent, High soon found and implemented a program that would contribute to an 81% decrease in accidents over the following two years.
High was familiar with the concepts of Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) and thought they might solve Leatherman's problem by increasing awareness and a sense of personal responsibility for safety among employees. Unfortunately, some of the drawbacks associated with BBS gave High reason to hesitate.
Simply put, behavior-based safety is a systemized approach to applying behavioral psychology to encourage safety in the workplace. BBS is based on the premise that most accidents are caused by unsafe behavior. A typical BBS program involves a systematic process to first identify the behaviors that contribute to most accidents and then define the safe practices necessary to reduce injury rates.
On the surface, BBS sounds deceptively simple. In practice, however, a good behavior-based safety program takes at least six months and more often more than a year to implement – and sometimes longer than that before the program's impact is reflected in a company's incident rates. In addition to the length of time involved, BBS typically requires a significant financial investment on the part of the company to hire professional consultants. Plus, the programs sometimes encounter resistance from employees – particularly when labor unions are involved.
The lengthy process usually begins with an extensive review of a company's incident investigation data to identify the behaviors that contribute to the most accidents. Then a percentage of the workforce is trained to conduct "observations" of fellow employees to record any Ôsafe' and Ôunsafe' actions witnessed and to provide feedback on safety practices within their work areas. The data collected from these observations is used to track the progress of the program. As the percentage of "safe" observations increases, the number of accidents theoretically will decrease.
Employee resistance can sometimes hinder a company's efforts to maximize return on its behavior-based safety investment. Some employees simply fear that observations may be used as a mechanism to enforce discipline. Organized labor's opposition runs deeper, contending that behavior-based safety puts the blame on employees for accidents rather addressing unsafe conditions. For example, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), which represents more than a million workers in retail food and food processing businesses, recently criticized BBS programs in a communiqué to its membership, saying these programs "shift the responsibility for a safe workplace from management to workers" and "generate fear and conflict amongst members." Indeed, some unions argue that company resources devoted to BBS would be better devoted to ensuring safer working conditions. Others argue that the incentives some BBS programs provide employees to reward safe practices discourage workers from reporting injuries.
BBS proponents are quick to refute many of these arguments, noting that in a well-implemented and fully effective program, discipline should never be brought into the process. They also contend that it makes no sense to implement BBS unless a company first addresses basic safety issues such as hazardous work conditions, OSHA compliance and solid policies and procedures.
When done correctly, BBS really can achieve drastic reductions in workplace injuries – and there are numerous examples to demonstrate this. Yet despite the many success stories, many organizations are discouraged by the time, commitment, expense and potential for controversy BBS entails.
Overcoming the Obstacles
For Bill High, Leatherman's needs were simply too urgent to wait six months or longer for results. After investigating a variety of safety training products on the market, High found a program he believed would motivate employees to take responsibility for their own safety while achieving a greater employee buy-in than possible with traditional BBS programs. Moreover, High picked a program that promised to begin changing employee behavior immediately.
Based on many of the same principles as traditional behavior-based safety, the program bypasses the lengthy initial analysis that precedes the actual implementation phases of most BBS programs. A key premise behind the program is that we can already identify the key behaviors that contribute to most accidents – regardless of whether the accidents occur within or outside of the workplace. The program proceeds directly to training employees to recognize these behaviors and providing techniques designed to minimize the risk of making a critical error that could result in injury.
What are the behaviors that contribute to most accidents? Research indicates that 80 to 90% of all workplace accidents, regardless of industry, are caused by critical errors involving the following four unintentional (or habitual) at-risk behaviors:
1. Eyes not on task.
2. Mind not on task.
3. Moving into or being in the line-of-fire.
4. Loss of balance, traction and/or grip.
Consider the increased risk these behaviors cause in one of the most common and hazardous activities most of us engage in regularly: driving a car. After all, U.S. Department of Transportation statistics indicate that more than 42,000 people are killed and three million injured in automobile accidents annually. What happens if we take our eyes off the road, even for a moment? (Eyes not on task.) Or what if we are driving while distracted by a toddler, a cell phone or a leaky cup of coffee? (Mind not on task.) Or if we exit a parking lot without first looking to make sure we're not pulling out into oncoming traffic? (Moving into the line-of-fire.) And how easy is it to slip and fall if we climb out of our car on an icy or snowy day without first checking our footing? (Loss of balance/traction and/or grip.)
The second part of the program's underlying premise maintains that certain human factors or "states" typically contribute to – and sometimes even cause – the at-risk behaviors. These human states include:
1. Rushing.
2. Fatigue.
3. Frustration.
4. Complacency.
These concepts are so simple that one might argue that what we're talking about here is simply common sense. But common sense isn't always common practice.
Leatherman Moves to Increase Safety Awareness
In June 2000, High taught his first safety awareness class at Leatherman. In a phased rollout, High focused on one department at a time, beginning with the departments with the highest accident rates. Each department divided the training program into six, one-hour sessions, meeting once per week. To foster employee participation in the training sessions, High was careful to limit class sizes to 12 employees.
The classroom sessions used videos to illustrate the program's key concepts. The objective is to train employees, supervisors and managers how to recognize the states – rushing, frustration, fatigue or complacency – and how they lead to the critical errors: mind not on task, eyes not on task, moving into the line of fire, and loss of grip or balance.
The training focused not only on making employees aware of these Ôstate to error' patterns, but also on techniques to help employees "self-trigger" on the states so they avoid making a critical error that could lead to injury. "Self-triggering" helps employees pause and refocus – physically and mentally – on the task at hand, continually keep the line-of-fire in sight and mind, and to be continually mindful of conditions that might cause them to lose their balance or footing. Also, the program focuses on Ôunintentional' and Ôhabitual' behaviors helps minimize employee concerns about blame and discipline – one of the problems frequently encountered in traditional behavior-based safety programs.
One of the things High liked was that the program was applicable to safety both on and off the job. "Lost workdays are not just the result of accidents on the job. They can occur from accidents off-the-job as well," he noted.
High dedicated the last ten minutes of each class to group discussion of the principles covered in that day's lesson. After covering the basic concepts in the initial classes, High asked employees to describe examples of the principles they had observed since the previous class – both from inside and outside of work.
"To make these concepts stick, employees need an environment that gives them the opportunity to think about their own experiences on the job, off the job or driving," explained Michael. "They need to ask themselves if they have ever experienced a serious injury without one or more of the states contributing to one or more of these errors. Very few people can relate a personal example of injuries outside of these patterns. This motivates employees and helps them internalize these concepts."
By May of 2002, High had rolled out the program to all of Leatherman's eight major departments and 259 employees. In addition to the classroom instruction and discussion, High distributed posters to all Leatherman departments in an effort to keep the concepts fresh and remind workers of state-to-error patterns.
The results were remarkable. Leatherman went from 78 accidents in 2000 to 15 accidents in 2002.
The message seemed to hit home with one Leatherman employee in particular, noted High. The employee, who had been averaging three injuries per year, exclaimed during his third training session, "Now I understand why I get hurt."
The program featured in this article is called SAFESTART, offered by PRIMEDIA Workplace Learning. William Joiner is Vice President and General Manager of PRIMEDIA Workplace Learning.
