Quality Safety Edge: Behavior Based Safety -- Values and Behavior: Building a Culture that Promotes Safety

To establish safety as a value in organizations requires comparable changes. It requires that employees begin talking to one another more often about safety practices that are consistent with our value for safety. Behavioral safety is one way of achieving that aim. When done well, behavioral safety provides an opportunity for employees at all levels to increase the frequency of talking with one another about safety on the job. Obviously, employees discussing safety practices is an activity that already exists to some degree. Employees will also always stop any coworker from performing an action that would cause injury or harm. However, behavioral safety processes reliably increase the frequency of safety discussions while also expanding the topics of discussion to include more positive feedback on safe practices as well as more problem-solving discussions about less significant risks. Whatever the methodology, a prevailing attention to safety is the primary characteristic of an organization that values safety. Behavioral safety is not a magic bullet, but it can be a significant element in promoting both the personal and organizational values that characterize a culture committed to minimizing the risks of injury.

Creating a culture that truly values safety requires the alignment of both formal and informal systems that support safe work practices. The diagram in Figure 1 illustrates the elements that must be considered. Thus, if we wish to create an effective safety culture, we must first create a vision or mission that describes the ideal, then establish a process to achieve those results, and finally define values that clarify how those involved will work together. Behavior is a particularly important element of our model because it is key to both initiating its processes and achieving its values. Good managers and healthy organizations develop a balanced emphasis on each of these.

Figure 1. Organizational elements must be aligned to create an effective culture.

Such balance is also significant. Unfortunately, many managers tend to emphasize either results or process. People who report to these managers accordingly reflect the manager's style. In addition, new managers tend to learn management skills from those in the existing hierarchy. The organization may not focus its attention solely on results or process, but because managers tend to hire and promote people like themselves, the emphasis becomes and remains unbalanced. The result is that many managers spend too much time on only one of these elements.

Overemphasis on Results

Many American managers manage their employees according to the results achieved by the employees. In many cases, manager are trained to manage by results, and organizations use antiquated systems of objectives and appraisals that maintain an unbalanced emphasis on results. In particular, managers who enter the private sector from the military often bring a strong results orientation with them, and industries that hire them – such as aerospace companies, defense contractors, and nuclear utilities – have consequently often adopted such an orientation. Companies that overemphasize results can be very successful, but also they often achieve their success only through Herculean efforts by top managers and key employees who often work extra-long hours to achieve the desired results. This orientation also frequently has a decided personal cost. These companies typically have high levels of stress, characterized by a high rate of employee burnout, high turnover, and higher than average rates of participation in Employee Assistance Programs. The focus on results further often creates a perception among employees that “All management really cares about is the numbers,” the reference being to budget figures, production records, efficiency targets, and/or safety statistics.

In results-oriented companies, when the expected results are not achieved, the tendency is to find whom to blame. The resulting fear and distrust often make improvement efforts difficult. Employees resist efforts to establish effective performance measures because they are skeptical about how managers will use those measures. Employees also become frustrated when results are not achieved and, because of the emphasis placed on such failures, believe that the organization does not care about them. In fact, results-oriented organizations seldom systematically address how managers and employees should treat one another. The result is that the quality of personal relationships becomes a further barrier to significant culture change.

In safety, “condition of employment” policies and incentive systems that unintentionally encourage employees to hide or overlook unsafe incidents frequently indicate an organization that overemphasizes results. Such policies and systems implicitly threaten employees with potential loss of their jobs, income, or promotional opportunities if they report an injury that results from a failure to comply with a company safety requirement. So, they may claim that an injury occurred at home. Or they may inaccurately report that the incident occurred in spite of compliance with organizational procedure, saying something like, “I was wearing my safety glasses, but this metal filing somehow got around them.” They may also make similar responses if an injury jeopardizes a group's chances of getting a tangible safety award, particularly if the award has significant value to group members.

Overemphasis on Process

The other focus for many American managers is on process. As quality improvement efforts have grown during the last decade, American managers have learned to look more closely at the processes by which their organizations achieve results. Using such methods as clarifying requirements, standardizing procedures, and establishing measures for key steps in the work process, this approach does bring more consistency in work processes required for continuous improvement.

While a process emphasis can work very well, many of the problems in today's organizations are not in process but in the behavior of leadership. Most of today's problem-solving tools are useful for addressing process issues, but they are often not adequate for addressing behavioral issues. Many of these tools assume that all problems are a function of the system, hence the efforts to resolve them often add complexity, bureaucracy, and paperwork. Too often the tendency is simply to create a new system rather than conduct an in-depth analysis to identify and deal with the root cause of a safety problem. For example, we have observed one organization experience a significant increase in injuries resulting from unsafe work practices on the plant floor. Site management responded by creating a new safety incentive system without considering either how much attention was being paid to safety on the plant floor or the frequency of safety discussions and feedback by those who worked there. Such a solution, despite its good intentions, merely increased costs and competed with other activities that had more value to the organization without identifying the root cause.

Further, the seemingly ever-increasing bureaucracy in process-oriented organizations can create the perception that “All management cares about is the paperwork.” Employees who work in a process-oriented culture tend to attack problems and change processes without identifying or even considering that the problems may be rooted in behavior and personal relationships – both of which are the primary responsibility of leadership.

Many organizations have adopted an observation-based safety process to improve employee compliance with safety procedures. Alas, simply implementing the basic elements of a behavioral observation process does not always work either. Companies can encounter problems in getting employees to conduct needed observations, in getting employees to effectively provide feedback to other employees, and with employees filling out observation checklists informally without conducting actual observations. These problems may indicate an overemphasis on the reporting process and a lack of adequate attention to the values required to successfully implement safety improvements.

How Do We Establish Safety as a Cultural Value?

Overemphasis on Results

Overemphasis on Process

Other General Management Problems