Quality Safety Edge: Grainne's Petrotech 2005 paper

This presentation will demonstrate the power of involving employees in a meaningful way in improving safety practices and work conditions. Participants will learn the steps to designing such a process, the critical success features of the process, and how to determine when their company or site is ready for active employee involvement.

The presentation will use actual case studies, many from the oil and gas industry, to illustrate all the main points – knowing when to implement an employee based process, four alternative strategies for implementation, and methods of implementation that will ensure success.

Behavioral safety is the application of behavioral psychology to promote safe behavior in the workplace using employee involvement. It involves initially identifying practices critical to reducing the risk of injury. These practices are compiled into a checklist that employees use to collect data on safe and unsafe practices within the organization. These observations create an opportunity for "mini Safety Meetings" so that multiple safety-focused interactions occur throughout the day. Employee teams analyze their observation data to develop action plans that promote continuous improvement in safety.

Ongoing research in the United States and Europe shows that behavioral safety typically results in injury reductions of approximately 30%, with a range from 20% to 50%. A reduction in the severity of injuries is also seen. Behavioral safety has been extensively studied since the early 1970's and is one of the only safety approaches proven through empirical research to change safety practices and reduce injuries. Research and experience indicate that even the most safety-sophisticated of companies, such as those in the petrochemical industry in the US, continue to reap additional benefits from implementation of a behavioral process. The biggest improvements are obviously seen in those companies and industries where safety and employee involvement have received the least attention, such as construction. Nevertheless, improving the systems that produce and maintain safe behavior continues to decrease the probability of injury.

Behavioral safety creates employee ownership by working with a team of employees to plan and implement the process. This involvement in design results in a high level of employee ownership and support. Some employees can participate in training their peers and all employees can participate in conducting safety observations. They use the resulting data to develop action plans to address hazards and encourage safe work practices.

What is Behavioral Safety?

There are many misconceptions about Behavioral Safety – partially because of the name of the technology. In fact, the process focuses on the environmental variables that prompt and support safe practices by employees. The process does not focus on the individual worker but on the elements of the company systems that encourage or discourage safe work habits. Behavioral safety is about (a) finding and removing barriers to safe behavior and (b) adding support systems to promote safe behavior.

There are many ways to implement Behavioral Safety – some more successful than others. The basic five elements can be implemented in a multitude of ways allowing each company to customize the process to its own work environment and culture.

The basic five elements are:

Critical Success Factors

Despite the apparent simplicity of these five basic elements, with 25 years of experience helping oil and gas companies use this process, we have discovered that there are some implementation strategies that result in enthusiastically adopted, widely used, and long lasting processes. And there are some implementation strategies that result in employees regarding the Behavioral Safety process as just another paperwork exercise forced on them by executives or regulators. In those cases, the process rarely produces the significant improvements in safety results that executives hoped for.

The five most important factors are:

Implementation Strategies to Ensure Success

We have discovered four distinct approaches to implementation of Behavioral Safety that include all five critical success factors. Each was developed in response to the varying needs of client companies.

Renovation

If a company already has a meaningful system of employee and management involvement in safety, it is possible to renovate the current structure and augment it with a behavioral approach. For example, if there is a joint management-employee safety committee that meets regularly and has significant influence in managing safety, then we can develop skills and install technology that will empower that committee further. A specific example of one of the many enhancements this approach provides is teaching the committee to analysis observation data, to develop effective action plans, and to reinforce improved safety performance and participation.

New Construction

Many companies are interested in the behavioral approach because they have tried to develop meaningful employee involvement in their safety program but believe that they are not accomplishing this goal in the manner envisioned. In this approach to implementation of Behavioral Safety, a representative employee team is guided through the design and implementation process. As a result of this intensive involvement, the team develops an understanding of the principles of the process and, more importantly, a commitment to its success stemming from their sense of ownership. This team of employees is given specific tools to manage the process once it is implemented so that their level of involvement and ownership remains high. All other employees, including management, are trained to participate in the process. One of the most important functions of the employee steering committee is to facilitate and reinforce this involvement. In this way, the process becomes a way of life for the company.

DIY – Do It Yourself

A third level of employee involvement is represented in a model of implementation that teaches the employee designers of the process to train their fellow employees as participants. Not only does teaching others about the process ensure a deeper level of understanding, but, more importantly, identification with the process is strengthened. Those employee trainers really own the process and are committed to its success. This implementation strategy is particularly effective with extremely large employee populations, such as are frequently found in processing plants and large refinery complexes.

Join the Crew

Many modern companies are committed to internalizing expertise to ensure self-sufficiency and innovation with technology. A final approach to implementation of Behavioral Safety develops internal experts in the science and technology of the field from which Behavioral Safety is drawn - Applied Behavior Analysis. These internal experts are then able to apply the technology creatively within their organization. This approach is particularly useful for geographically dispersed organizations or those organizations where workforce turnover is extremely high due to the project by project nature of the work, for example, construction and oil and gas service companies.

A History of Success with Behavioral Safety in the Oil and Gas Sector

1981 Dixilyn-Field Drilling Company

This is one of the pioneering behavioral safety interventions conducted in 1981. The company achieved a 50 percent reduction in lost time injuries, moving from the industry average to the top 10 percent of their industry. In 1982 they won industry recognition for their safety performance from the International Association of Drilling Contractors. The process remained in effect until 1985 when the parent company, Pan Handle Eastern, sold off its drilling assets.

1992 Tenneco Gas Pipeline

In 1992, Tenneco Gas Pipeline, headquartered in Houston, TX, implemented a Values Based Safety to build trust between employees and managers. Employees usually worked alone or in pairs at stations stretching from South Texas to Massachusetts. During a nine-month pilot of the Values Based Safety at nine locations, lost time accidents were down 30 percent, dropping from 1.6 to 1 per 200,000 work hours. In a survey of 151 employees at the pilot locations, 90 percent said the process should be rolled out to the rest of the organization, 85 percent reported that they were more aware of safety as a result of the process, and 81 percent reported that they worked more safely as a result of the process. Three years after implementation, Tenneco had the best safety record in its industry. The process survived until Tenneco was taken over by El Paso Natural Gas and underwent a 30% reduction in headcount. Since the takeover, several of the original participants remain so committed to behavioral safety that they are working to initiate a similar process within El Paso Energy.

1993 Citgo Petroleum Corporation

The Citgo petroleum refinery in Lake Charles, LA has one of the longest-lived Behavioral Safety processes. The company began to work with Quality Safety Edge in 1993 in order to break through a plateau in injury rates. An employee team from each of nine major areas customized and managed the process. All 1,400 employees conduct observations and provide coaching to their co-workers. The initial pilot area went from a three-year annual average of three recordable incidents to two years without a recordable incident. After the pilot phase, the process was successfully implemented in each operating area. Citgo - Lake Charles also achieved significant reductions in workers compensation costs. The Behavioral Safety process has removed variation in safety outcomes so that the site maintains a consistent level of performance and remains a safety leader in the refinery industry. Citgo - Lake Charles employee teams improve their process through annual workshops and refinery-wide conferences with Quality Safety Edge. All site contractors are required to develop their own Behavioral Safety process with the help of the Citgo employee Steering Committees. On the basis of the results achieved at this site, Citgo identified Behavioral Safety as a corporate "Best Practice". In 1998, Quality Safety Edge initiated the Behavioral Safety process with the 600 employees of the Citgo refinery in Corpus Christi, TX. In 1999, Dr. McSween traveled to Venezuala to teach safety officers and executives of Citgo's parent company, Petroleos de Venezuala, about the Behavioral Safety process.

1996 Amoco Pipeline Company – Gulf Coast Business District

These 85 Amoco Pipeline employees service and maintain Amoco gas pipelines along the Texas Gulf Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico. They often work or drive long distances alone. When designing the Values Based Safety Process in October 1996, the employee Design Team worked hard to include peer observation, rather than self-observation, so that the important social feedback component of the process would be retained. Creative planning and arrangement of work schedules provide ample opportunity for co-worker observations. Results were impressive - only one OSHA-recordable incident since the process began.

1997 Chevron Canada Resources

Chevron Canada Resources (CCR) produces and transports gas throughout Alberta, Canada. Quality Safety Edge worked with CCR in 1997 to design and pilot the Values Based Safety Process, rolling out to 14 other locations in 1998. During 1999, CCR experienced a significant reorganization, including the sale of two locations, a joint venture involving another location, consolidation of work groups, and reductions in work force. The resulting organization has ten teams of employees working at ten production plants and fields compared with 23 teams of employees working at 14 production plants and fields in 1998. The number of field employees dropped from more than 250 in 1998 to approximately 150 in 1999. CCR had a rate of .76 OSHA-recordable injuries in 1997 per 200,000 work-hours, and .79 in 1998. In 1999, the company's rate of OSHA-recordable injuries was .72. The company was pleased to maintain this low incident rate during the period of change.

References

Chhokar, J. S., Wallin, J. A., (1984). Improving safety through applied behavior analysis. Journal of Safety Research, 15, 141-151.

Fitch, H. G., Herman, J., Hopkins, B. L., (1976). Safe and unsafe behavior and its modification. Journal of Occupational Medicine, 18, 618-622.

Fox, D. K., Hopkins. B. L., Anger, W. K. (1987). The long-term effects of a token economy on safety performance in open-pit mining. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 20, 215-224.

McSween, T.E., Values-Based Safety®: Improving Your Safety Culture with a Behavioral Approach, 2003, John Wiley and Sons, NY

Sulzer-Azaroff, B., Loafman, B., Merante, R. J., Hlavacek, A. C. (1990). Improving safety in a large industrial plant. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 10, 99-120.

Behavioral Safety: Save LivesBy Involving Employees