By Shawn M. Galloway, ProAct Safety
Today, we welcome guest writer and safety consultant Shawn Galloway who presents his ideas about a streamlined, cost-conscious approach to behavior-based safety.
Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) has effectively influenced risk for over 30 years and has contributed to improvement in performance and culture in the majority of organizations who have implemented a process. After personally implementing hundreds of processes globally and being exposed to hundreds more, I have found that BBS is defined differently by almost all who utilize it.
Rather than offering the author’s definition of BBS, a structural understanding will be provided instead. For the purpose of this article, there are four elements necessary for a successful process, regardless of methodology.
FOCUS—Identify the precautions critical to minimize risk exposure and the prevention of incidents.
INFLUENCE—Observe and provide positive feedback to influence future decisions.
LISTEN—Gather anonymous insight into what might influence (perceptions, habits, obstacles, barriers) a person’s ability to take a precaution so action plans can be developed to address the reasons for risk.
MEASURE—Create new metrics to proactively manage and influence excellence in culture and performance.
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Safety Toolbox
Some organizations have taken a homegrown approach, while many more have chosen the expert-assisted path. Regardless of method, the biggest opportunity for improvement is to utilize a process-orientation.
Behavior-based approaches are but a tool in the ever-improving safety and quality toolbox. Many companies, and even more consultants, place too much faith in their processes or fall in love with their methodology. They tend to forget one vital element: results.
Every organization is different. Thus any approach to improvement, BBS or otherwise, must be made to fit the organization and its needs. If the process demonstrates early results, it must be tweaked to continuously produce fresh results. Any methodology that produces change must adapt to fit the new environment it has created to continue providing value.
Far too many processes lose sight of this and focus on the wrong indicators: process metrics. Progress towards desired results is quite motivational, but the overwhelming majority of process metrics only communicate or focus on the number of observations. A process that regularly accomplishes the target number of observations with a great degree of participation is not effective if it fails to change common practice, thought processes, or to move the needle on lagging indicators. Moreover, processes that are implemented well are not successful until they have demonstrated sustainable results.
Finding improvement opportunities, and thus new results, happens best when following internal discussions. Asking the right questions also places an emphasis in the right area. If the questions asked center around process-related issues, a process orientation is created. Never forget that process metrics are critical, but they are not the goal. The goal is to help everyone become 100% safe, 100% of the time.
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Shawn M. Galloway is the President of ProAct Safety. As an international consultant, professional speaker and seminar leader, Shawn has helped hundreds of international organizations achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture. Shawn is also the host of the highly-acclaimed weekly podcast series, Safety Culture Excellence®.
Tomorrow, we’ll conclude Shawn’s review of BBS with 10 essential questions about the behavior-based safety process, the answers to which will help ensure a safe workplace.