Fifty principles in order you understand the human behaviors versus a systematic HSEQ program, which is summarized in this text. When you use these principles to design, execute, assess and continuously improve, interventions in a systematic HSEQ program in order to change workers behaviors and atitudes of a certain company or firm, you will be very well, on your way, to achieve a HSEQ world class, (Health, Safety Environment and Quality).
This is not a priority list. Don’t consider anything in terms of the numeric sequence that you will read. Use them accordingly to the specifics of the work place where you intend to apply them, and you will be able to make a difference and bring a change in the work culture for the better and far more constructive, efficient and without incidents.
PRINCIPLE 1: HSEQ processes should be internally not externally - driven.It's common to hear managers and workers talk about HSEQ in terms of compliance to some external standard, law or regulation. It often seems they do things more to satisfy the mandates of this outside regulatory agency than for themselves. This translates into perceptions of top down control, and performing to avoid penalties rather than to achieve success.
Ownership, commitment, and proactive behaviours are more likely when we work toward our own goals, not someone else’s. How we define programmes and activities can influence attitudes that shape involvement. It makes sense to talk about corporate HSEQ goals as a mission owned and achieved by the very people it benefits.
PRINCIPLE 2: Culture change requires people to understand the principles and how to use them.We distinguish between education on the one hand, and training on the other. It must be emphasised that long term culture change requires both. Education focuses on theory or principles. Training gets into the specifics of how to turn principles into practical procedures. Role-playing or one to one interaction is very important because participants get direct feedback on how they're executing procedures or processes.
PRINCIPLE 3: Champions of a world-class HSEQ culture will emanate from those who teach the principles and procedures.When people teach, they "walk the talk" and become champions of change. It is clear that success depends on the presence of these leaders. There is no better way to develop champions of a campaign than to first teach relevant theory and method, then show how others can be instructed, and finally allow opportunities for colleagues and co-workers to teach each other.
PRINCIPLE 4: Leadership can be developed by teaching and demonstrating the characteristics of effective leaders.Just because you believe in something doesn't guarantee you'll be an effective champion of the cause. Leaders have certain characteristics, which can be learned and cultivated in others. People need to understand the principles behind good leadership, and the behaviours that reflect good leadership qualities. You can also learn by observing the leadership skills of others. And when you see leaders in action, reward their exemplary behaviour with feedback.
PRINCIPLE 5: Focus recognition, education, and training on people reluctant but willing, rather than on those resisting.People resist change for many reasons. Some feel insecure leaving their comfort zones. Some mistrust any change in policy or practice that wasn't their idea. Others balk for the special attention they get by resisting. It's usually a waste of time trying to force change on these people. In fact, resistance hardens as more pressure is applied.
It saves time to prioritise. Focus first on those who "want to dance." The one’s willing to get involved. Then turn these leaders loose on the folks who are reluctant to get involved. At least these people are willing to consider a change proposal. Peer instruction can cultivate change champions (Principle 3), as well as increase participation. When a critical mass of individuals gets involved and achieves success as a result of change, many initial resisters will join in out of choice, not coercion.
PRINCIPLE 6: Giving people opportunities for choice can increase commitment, ownership, and involvement.A basic reason for preferring the use of positive over negative consequences to motivate behaviour is that people feel freer, they perceive more choice, when working to achieve rewards. As illustrated in numerous laboratory experiments and field applications, increasing perception of choice leads to more motivation and involvement in the process.
Personal choice also implies personal control enhancing empowerment and willingness to actively care for others. It's important to realise that eliminating the perception of choice by imposing a top down mandate that restricts or constrains work behaviour, for example - can sap feelings of ownership, commitment and empowerment, and inhibit involvement.
PRINCIPLE 7: A world-class HSEQ culture requires continuous attention to factors in three domains: workplace, person states, and behaviour.In the “HSEQ Triad," the behaviour and person sides represent the psychological part of the model. But don't overlook the need for workplace change. The workplace includes physical conditions and the general atmosphere or ambience. For example, safety can be considered a top-down "condition of employment" or a bottom up "opportunity to get involved." Which of these perspectives you choose influences your safety related attitudes and behaviours.
Workplace, behaviour, and person factors are dynamic and interactive; a change in one eventually impacts the other two. For example, behaviours that reduce the probability of injury often involve workplace change, and lead to attitudes consistent with the safe behaviours. In other words, when people choose to act safely, they act themselves into safe thinking and this often results in some workplace change.
PRINCIPLE 8: Don't count on common sense for improvement.Most common sense is not common. It's biased by our subjective interpretation of unique experiences. We must discover principles of human behaviour through systematic application of the scientific method. Beware "pop psychology" based on unfounded intuition or "common sense." Many statements sound good but are incorrect. Profound knowledge comes from rigorous research and theory development, and often runs counter to common sense.
PRINCIPLE 9: Incentive programmes should focus on the process rather than outcomes.One of the most frequent common-sense mistakes in HSEQ management is the use of outcome based incentive programmes. Giving rewards for avoiding an injury seems reasonable and logical. But it readily leads to covering up minor injuries and a distorted picture of safety performance. The basic activator behaviour consequence contingency demonstrates that incentives need to focus on process activities, or behaviours.
PRINCIPLE 10: HSEQ performance should not be considered a priority, but a
value with no compromise.This is the ultimate vision: Safety becomes a value linked to every priority in the workplace, or wherever we find ourselves. Priorities change according to circumstances; values are deep seated personal beliefs beyond compromise. Establishing safety as a value won't happen overnight. It will take time, and there is no "quick fix."
PRINCIPLE 11: Safety is a continuous fight with human nature.Human nature (or natural motivating consequences) typically encourages at risk behaviour. The soon, certain, positive, and natural consequences of risky behaviour are hard to overcome. We're talking about comfort, convenience, and expediency. The alternatives often mean discomfort, inconvenience, and inefficiency. When you compete with natural supportive consequences in order to teach, motivate, or change behaviour, you're fighting human nature.
Principle 12: Behaviour is learned from three basic procedures: classical
conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning.Through naturally occurring consequences and planned instructional activities, we learn every day, and we develop attitudes and emotional reactions to people, events, and workplace stimuli. The critical aspect of this principle is that our actions and feelings result from what we learn through experience, both planned and unplanned. Basic learning principles can be applied to change what we do and feel. But experience and practice develop habits that are hard to break. Plus, it's possible that natural contingencies and social influences support a "bad habit” or "negative attitude." So, learning new behaviours and attitudes often requires another fight with human nature.
PRINCIPLE 13: People view behaviour as correct and appropriate to the degree they see others doing it.Since personal experience often convinces us that “it's not going to happen to me," we need a powerful reason to perform safely when personal injury is improbable. So consider this: Everyone who sees you acting safely or at-risk either learns a new behaviour or thinks what you're doing is okay. Now consider the vast number of people who observe your behaviour every day. Our influence as a social model gives us special responsibility to go out of our way for safety.
PRINCIPLE 14: People will blindly follow authority, even when the mandate runs counter to good judgement and social responsibility.This principle is a potential barrier to safe work practices. The fact that people often follow top down rules without regard to potential risk is alarming. This puts special responsibility on managers and supervisors who give daily direction. These front line leaders could signal, even subtly, the approval of at risk behaviour in order to reach production demands. And people are apt to follow even implicit demands from their supervisor to whom they readily delegate responsibility for injury that could result from at risk behaviour.
PRINCIPLE 15: Social loafing can be prevented by increasing personal responsibility, individual accountability, group cohesion, and interdependence.This principle entails a method to increase group productivity and synergy. Giving up personal responsibility for safety to another person (Principle 14) could be due to the social mechanisms presumed to influence social loafing. It's possible to decrease blind compliance to rules that foster at-risk behaviour by manipulating factors found to decrease social loafing. Thus, workplace interventions and action plans need to be implemented with the aim of increasing people's perceptions of personal responsibility and accountability, as well as their sense of group cohesion and interdependence.
PRINCIPLE 16: On the-job observation and Interpersonal feedback is key to achieving a World-class HSEQ culture.Critical behaviour checklists and communicating the results of checklist observations put this principle to work. "Try harder" won't work without the right process. Interpersonal observation and feedback are basic tools to use when the supervisor says, "Try harder."
PRINCIPLE 17: Behaviour based HSEQ is a continuous DO IT process.D = Define target behaviours
0 = Observe target behaviours
I = Intervene to improve behaviours
T = Test impact of intervention.
This four step process enables continuous improvement through an objective behaviour focused approach. People need to decide on critical target behaviours to observe. After baseline observations are taken, an intervention is developed and implemented. By continuing to observe the target behaviours, the impact of the intervention programme can be objectively evaluated. Results might suggest a need to refine the intervention, carry out another one, or define another set of behaviours to work on. The next four principles provide guidance for designing behaviour change interventions.
PRINCIPLE 18: Behaviour is directed by activators and motivated by consequences.External or internal events (referred to as activators) taking place before behaviour only motivate to the extent that they signal or specify consequences. Intentions and goals can motivate behaviour if they stipulate positive or negative consequences. Understanding this principle is critical to developing effective behaviour change techniques. We should understand how this principle guides the development of more effective activators, and procedures for improving the motivational power of consequences.
PRINCIPLE 19: Intervention impact is influenced by: amount of response information, participation and social support, and external consequences.Interventions that give specific instructions (response information) and get participants actively involved are likely to influence behaviour and attitude change. And, if the intervention facilitates support from others, such as co-workers or family members, it can have lasting effects. Furthermore, people are more apt to develop internal motivation when external rewards or threats are relatively small and insufficient to completely justify the target behaviour. This phenomenon has been referred to as the “less leads to more effect" and is most likely to occur when people feel personally responsible for their choice of action and the resulting consequences.
PRINCIPLE 20: Extra and external consequences should not overjustify the target behaviour.The best examples of positive consequences (from thank you cards to the privileges, commendations, and small tangibles) are neither large nor expensive. Rewards should not provide complete justification for desired behaviour. We don't want people complying with rules only to gain a reward or avoid a penalty. If that's the case, what happens when we take away the consequence, good or bad? We take away the reason to comply. This is why many people wear PPE at work, but rarely at home.
PRINCIPLE 21: People are motivated to maximise positive consequences(rewards) and minimise negative consequences (costs).This principle offers another reason why people are not likely to follow operating procedures in the absence of external controls, or behaviour consequence contingencies. As reflected in Principle 11, natural external consequences usually support risk taking at the expense of safe alternatives, which are usually more inconvenient, uncomfortable, or time consuming.
Of course, this principle relates to many behaviours. If there are more perceived costs than benefits to intervening, actively caring behaviour is unlikely. Therefore, a prime strategy for increasing safety and actively caring behaviours is to overcome the costs (negative consequences) with benefits (positive consequences). Various kinds of consequences are defined by the next principle.
PRINCIPLE 22: Behaviour is motivated by six types of consequences: positive vs. negative, intrinsic vs. extrinsic, and internal vs. external.Understanding these characteristics can enable significant insights into the motivation behind observed behaviour. Appreciating these various consequences can also suggest whether external intervention is called for to change behaviour, and what kind of intervention to implement. It's possible the natural external consequences supporting ongoing at risk behaviour cannot be overcome with extra external consequences. In this case, long term behaviour change requires the modification of the natural consequences or the application of techniques to alter internal consequences.
PRINCIPLE 23: Negative consequences have four undesirable side effects: Escape, aggression, apathy, and counter-control.How did you feel the last time you received a reprimand from a supervisor? Maybe you felt like slinking away, or taking a swipe at him. Chances are you didn't go back to the job charged up. Perhaps you wanted to do something to make him look bad. These and other undesirable side effects of using negative consequences should be noted and understood.
PRINCIPLE 24: Natural variation in behaviour can lead to a belief that negative consequences have more impact than positive consequences.Behaviour fluctuates from good to bad for many reasons. Peak performance seldom can be sustained, and poor performance is almost bound to get better at some point. So if you praise someone and their performance falters, don't swear off positive feedback. And don't overestimate the power of your reprimand if it gets some immediate results. Keep things in perspective.
PRINCIPLE 25: Long term behaviour change requires people to change "inside" as well as "outside."Consider both external behaviour and internal person factors. A world-class HSEQ culture requires integrating both behaviour based and person based psychology. The next several principles focus on understanding “inside" factors.
PRINCIPLE 26: All perception is biased and reflects personal history, prejudices, behaviors and expectationsAppreciating this principle is key to understanding people, and realising the importance of actively listening to others before intervening. It also supports the need to depend on objective, systematic observation for knowledge rather than common sense (Principle 8).
It's important to realise the reciprocal relationship between perception and behaviour. Perceptions influence actions, and in turn actions influence perceptions. If we perceive risk, we'll act to reduce it; by acting to reduce risk, we'll become more aware of other risks.
PRINCIPLE 27: Perceived risk is lowered when a hazard is perceived as familiar,understood, controllable, or preventable.When people perceive a new risk, they adjust their behaviour to avoid it. Call it "fear of the unknown." The reverse is also true. Research has shown that hazards perceived as familiar, understood, controllable, and preventable are viewed as less risky. This is why many hazards are underestimated by employees.
PRINCIPLE 28: The slogan "all injuries are preventable" is false and reduces perceived risk.Frankly, telling people all injuries are preventable insults their intelligence. They know better. It's difficult enough to anticipate and control all workplace and behavioural factors contributing to injuries, but controlling factors inside people is clearly impossible.
Such a slogan can make it embarrassing to report an injury, and could influence a cover up. If they think all injuries are preventable, they will think, “I was really stupid to have this injury, so I'd better not report it." The most critical problem with this popular slogan is that it can reduce the perception of risk. Hazards considered controllable and preventable are perceived as relatively risk-free.
PRINCIPLE 29: People compensate for increases in perceived safety by taking more risks.Research has shown that some people will compensate for a decrease in perceived risk by performing more risky behaviour. In other words, some people increase their tolerance for risk when feeling protected with a safety device. High technology safety engineering can give a false sense of security. This is not the case for people who hold safety as a value (Principle 10).
PRINCIPLE 30: When people evaluate others they focus on internal factors; when evaluating personal performance, they focus on external factors.This principle is termed “The Fundamental Attribution Error." It contributes to systematic bias whenever we attempt to evaluate others, from completing performance appraisals to conducting an injury investigation. Because we are quick to attribute internal (person based) factors to other people's behaviour, we tend to presume consistency in others because of permanent traits or personality characteristics. To explain injuries to other persons we use expressions like, "He's just careless," "She had the wrong attitude," and “They were not thinking like a team."
On the other hand, when evaluating our own behaviour, we point the finger to external factors. This should make us stop and realise the many observable variables that can be measured and often changed to increase everyone's safety related behaviour and reduce injuries throughout a culture.
PRINCIPLE 31: When succeeding, people over attribute internal factors; but when failing, people over attribute external factors.This research based principle is referred to as the "self serving bias," and is sure to warp injury investigations. Placing blame for a mistake on outside variables is just a basic defence to protect one's self esteem. In most organisations, even a minor injury is perceived as a failure. As a result, the victim is sure to avoid discussing inside, person factors contributing to the mishap. Statements like “I was fatigued," “I didn't know the proper procedure,” or "My mind was on other things” are far less probable than “The work demands were too severe," “The trainer didn't show me the correct procedure,” or "Excessive noise and heat distracted me." The best advice is to accept the self serving bias and allow people their ego protecting excuses. Then search for measurable external factors (including behaviours) that can be changed to reduce the probability of another injury.
PRINCIPLE 32: People feel more personal control when working to achieve success than when working to avoid failure.The sense of having control over life events is one of the most important person states contributing to our successes and failures. When we feel in control we're more motivated and work harder to succeed. We're also more likely to accept failure as something we can change. Thus, the value of increasing people's sense of personal control is obvious. One way to do this is to develop scoring procedures for achievements, rather than focusing on the number of reported injuries as a measure of success. This puts the emphasis on measuring process activities that can lead to loss control or injury prevention.
PRINCIPLE 33: Stressors lead to positive stress or negative distress, depending on appraisal of personal control.When we believe we can do things to reduce our stressors such as work demands, interpersonal conflict, boredom, we're more motivated to take control. This is positive stress, an internal person state not nearly as detrimental as distress. We feel distress when we believe there is little we can do about current stressors. This state can lead to frustration, exhaustion, burnout, and dangerous behaviour.
It's important to recognise states of distress in others and attempt to help them. After actively listening to another person's concerns, you might be able to offer constructive suggestions. Sometimes it's useful to help people distinguish between the stressors they can control and the ones they can't. We can be concerned about a lot of things, but we can only control some of these.
Helping people focus on the stressors they can reduce builds their sense of self efficacy, personal control, and optimism. These are the person states that imply empowerment and increase one's willingness to actively care: “I can make a difference."
PRINCIPLE 34: In a world-class HSEQ culture everyone goes beyond the call of duty for themselves and others they actively care.While behaviour based psychology provides methods and techniques to improve the human dynamics of safety, principles from person based psychology need to be considered to ensure that behaviour based tools are used. The ultimate aim is to integrate behaviour based and person based psychology so everyone participates in efforts to achieve a world-class HSEQ culture. In the ideal culture, everyone actively cares for the safety and health of others.
PRINCIPLE 35: Actively caring should be planned and purposeful, and should focus on workplace, person, or behaviour.We need to plan ways to enable and nurture as much actively caring behaviour as possible, rather than sit back and wait for it random acts of kindness.
By considering the three domains of actively caring focus, we can sometimes get more benefit from an act of kindness. In particular, including behaviour focused actively caring can often result in the most benefit. For example, it's often possible to include specific behavioural advice, direction, or motivation with a donation (workplace focused actively caring) and with crisis intervention and active listening (person focused actively caring).
PRINCIPLE 36: Direct, behaviour focused actively caring is proactive and most challenging, and requires effective communication skills.Some acts of caring are relatively painless and effortless contributing to a charity, sending a get well card, or actively listening to another person's problems. But telling someone how to change their behaviour can be confrontational and challenging, especially when it's direct. Think of the parent telling the child: I want to discuss your behaviour. This is the type of active caring we're most likely to avoid, which is unfortunate because it's the most beneficial. But even parents will pass up chances to talk about behaviour with their kids. Why?
You often hear parents lament that they had no training in how to raise children. Our resistance is partly due to lack of confidence in our communication skills. Proper training and practice as a coach increases our ability to actively care in the most beneficial way.
PRINCIPLE 37: Coaching starts with Caring and involves Observing, Analysing and Communicating, which leads to Helping.The letters of COACH signify labels for the sequential events in the process. The coaching process should start with an atmosphere of interpersonal Caring and an agreement that the coach can Observe an individual's performance, preferably with a behavioural checklist. Then the coach Analyses the observations from a fact finding, system level perspective. Subsequently, the results are communicated in one to one actively caring conversation, with the sole purpose to help another individual reduce the possibility of personal injury.
PRINCIPLE 38: Actively caring can be increased indirectly with procedures that enhance self esteem, belongingness, and empowerment.This principle reflects one of the most innovative and critical theories. Substantial research is available to support each component of this principle. Procedures that enhance a person's sense of self esteem (“I am valuable"), belongingness (“I belong to a team"), and empowerment (“I can make a difference") make it more likely that person will actively care for the safety or health of another person. Nourishing each of these person states leads to the actively caring belief that 'We can make valuable differences."
PRINCIPLE 39: Empowerment is facilitated with increases in self efficacy,personal control, and optimism.When people's sense of self efficacy (“I can do it"), personal control (“I am in control"), or optimism (“I expect the best") is increased, they are less apt to experience distress and more likely to feel empowered (“I can make a difference"). In addition, empowerment increases one's inclination to perform actively caring behaviours.
Note that empowerment does not necessarily result from receiving more responsibility. In order to truly feel more empowered, people need to perceive they have the skills, resources, and opportunity to take on the added responsibility (self efficacy), believe they have personal impact over their new duties (personal control), and expect the best from their efforts to be more responsible (optimism).
PRINCIPLE 40: When people feel empowered their safe behaviour spreads to other situations and behaviors.In a world-class HSEQ culture people go beyond the call of duty for safety. This means they perform safe behaviours in various situations. More specifically, they show both stimulus generalisation (performing various particular safe behaviour in various settings) and response generalisation (performing safe behaviours related to a particular target behaviour).
Both types of generalisation occur naturally when safety becomes a value rather than a priority (Principle 10). Obviously we need to intervene in special ways to promote safety as a value. Our applied research has shown that facilitating empowerment is one special way to increase generalisation and cultivate safety as a value.
PRINCIPLE 41: Actively caring can be increased directly by educating people about factors contributing to bystander apathy.This principle expresses the most basic procedure for encouraging actively caring behaviour directly. Research has shown that educating people about the barriers to helpful behaviour can remove some obstacles and increase the probability of actively caring behaviour. Similarly, discussing the barriers to safe behaviour can motivate people to improve safety, provided they also learn specific techniques for doing this.
PRINCIPLE 42: As the number of observers of a crisis increases, the probability of helping decreases.This principle, supported with substantial behavioural research, is probably the first barrier to actively caring behaviour that should be taught. It's strange but true, and means that people cannot assume that someone else will intervene in a crisis. In fact, the most common excuse for not acting is probably something like, “I thought someone else would do it,” or “I didn't know it was my responsibility." This principle reflects the need to promote a norm that it's everyone's responsibility to actively care for safety. We can never assume someone else will correct an at risk behaviour or condition.
PRINCIPLE 43: Actively caring behaviour Is facilitated when appreciated and inhibited when unappreciated.Making an effort to actively care directly for someone else's safety is a big step for many people and deserves genuine recognition. Then, if advice is called for to make the actively caring behaviour more effective, corrective feedback should be given appropriately. Be sure to make your deposits first. All actively caring behaviour is well intentioned, but not frequently practised with the kind of feedback that shapes improvement. A negative reaction to an act of caring can be quite punishing, and severely discourage a person from trying again. Consequently, much of the future of actively caring behaviour is in the hands of those who receive people's attempts to actively care.
PRINCIPLE 44: A positive reaction to actively caring can increase self esteem, empowerment, and belongingness.This is a follow up to Principle 43, and supports the need to sincerely recognise occurrences of actively caring behaviour. Although research in this area is lacking, it is intuitive that feeling successful at actively caring behaviour should lead to more active caring. Success should enhance self esteem, empowerment, and belongingness, and so indirectly increase the probability of more caring acts.
Thus, we have the potential for a mutually supporting cycle of actively caring influence, provided the reactions to actively caring behaviour are positive.
PRINCIPLE 45: The universal norms of consistency and reciprocity motivate everyday behaviours, including actively caring.These social influence norms have a powerful impact on human behaviour. Sometimes people apply these norms intentionally to influence others. At other times, these norms are activated without our awareness. Regardless of intention or awareness, behaviour change techniques derived from these norms can be very effective.
PRINCIPLE 46: Once people make a commitment, they encounter internal and external pressures to think and act consistently with their position.This is why it is said that you can act people into thinking differently, or think people into acting differently. If people act in a certain way on the "outside," they will adjust their "inside” including perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes to be consistent with their behaviours. The reverse is also true, but it is recommended targeting behaviour first because it's easier to change on a large scale. We know much more about changing behaviour than perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes, because behaviour is easier to measure objectively and reliably.
PRINCIPLE 47: The consistency norm is responsible for the impact of “foot in the door" and "throwing a curve."When an individual agrees with a relatively small request, for example, to serve on a safety committee, you have your foot in the door. To be consistent, the person is more likely to agree later with a larger request, perhaps to give a safety presentation at a plant wide meeting. Similarly, when people sign a petition or promise card that commits them to act in a certain way, say to actively care for the safety of others, they experience pressure from the consistency norm to follow through.
The technique of “throwing a curve" occurs when a person is persuaded to make a particular decision because there's not much at stake. Then the stakes are raised. Due to the consistency norm, the individual will likely stick with the original decision. Here's a safety application: An employee is asked to serve on a safety committee. No big deal the committee meets just once a month. But then the employee is asked to attend more meetings because a special project has come up. To remain true to his first decision, the employee will probably stay on the committee and take on the additional work.
PRINCIPLE 48: The reciprocity norm is responsible for the impact of the door in the face technique.The reciprocity norm is a powerful determinant of human behaviour. Its influence is reflected in the popular expression, "one good turn deserves another" and in the well known Golden Rule. One good act will likely lead to another.
The success of the "door in the face" technique depends on the reciprocity norm. If an employee shuts the door on a major request, he's more likely to be open to a lesser request. If you ask for something less imposing, costly, or inconvenient after the initial refusal, your chances of being accepted are greater than if you started with the minor request. Your willingness to withdraw the larger request sets up an obligation to reciprocate and accept the smaller request.
PRINCIPLE 49: Numbers from programme evaluations should be meaningful to all participants and direct and motivate intervention improvement.These last two principles relate to the critical issue of programme evaluation. In safety, the total recordable injury rate (TRIR) is the most popular evaluation number used to rank companies for safety rewards. It is calculated by multiplying the number of workplace injuries by 200,000 and dividing the answer by the total person hours worked in that time period. What an obvious example of an abstract number with little meaning!
The most direct measure of ongoing safety performance comes from behavioural observations, and there are ways to obtain meaningful feedback numbers from such process evaluation.
We use questionnaires that assess particular person states to gauge reactions to interventions. Such evaluation tools are not as objective and directly applicable to process improvement as feedback charts from behavioural observations. But results of surveys to measure perceptions, attitudes, or person states can be meaningful to programme participants if explained properly. If given before and during an intervention process, questionnaires can reflect changes in the "inside" factors that impact programme acceptance, participation, and future success.
PRINCIPLE 50: Statistical analysis often adds confusion and misunderstanding to evaluation results, thereby reducing social validity.Complex statistics are appropriate and often necessary for research journals. But if the purpose of a programme evaluation is to improve a safety process, we need to provide numbers that give the most meaningful feedback to programme participants the people in the best position to improve the process.
Research has shown (Sandman and Slovic) that group statistics have minimal impact on risk perception. If your goal is to increase risk awareness and motivate safe behaviour, the most influential evaluation tool you can use is actually anecdotal. The most stimulating feedback usually comes from the personal report of an injured employee. However, the victim might want to cover up at-risk behaviour leading to an injury. The culture needs to support reporting personal injuries, as well as discussing ways to prevent future incidents.
When people give personal testimony, the presentation is more influential than a statistical analysis. We should probably spend less time calculating summary injury statistics and more time eliminating the barriers to the personal reporting and investigating of safety related incidents from near hits and first aid cases to lost time injuries.
CONCLUSIONThis unit reviews the principles of human dynamics. Founded on research published in scientific journals, they enable profound understanding of the psychology of safety. Use them as guidelines to develop, implement, evaluate, and refine improvement programmes and you'll make a positive difference in the safety of your organisation, community, or culture.
Champions are needed to lead this process. Some are easy to find; others will evolve when the principles reviewed here are taught. Give potential champions opportunities to teach these principles and help develop interventions. Active participation increases both belief in the principles and empowerment to apply them to achieve a world-class HSEQ culture.
There is no quick fix to culture change. The journey is not to be without bumpy roads, forced detours, and missed turns. These principles are your map to reach an enviable destination, but be prepared to blaze new paths and traverse difficult terrain. And please don't forget to take a break now and then to appreciate journey milestones. Recognise behaviours that contribute to a successful journey.
