Written by Administrator | 11 November 2009

Safety leaders are taking a more active interest in their employees.

The shelves of America’s largest bookstores are being continually stocked with new books about leadership. It has become a national preoccupation – management consultants, corporate trainers and public workshop providers are very busy selling leadership interventions.

America is hungry for leaders and there is a leadership theory that fits every perspective. Companies seeking to turn managers into leaders will find a consultant or workshop that suits their taste. There are so many choices, you don’t know which book to read and it is hard to decide if one or the other book is right or wrong. They all seem to make sense, but most of these books portray a good leader as someone who has skills, assets, traits and abilities that are superhuman. Can one realistically expect to learn how to do and be all these wonderful things – a superleader?

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Written by Administrator | 11 November 2009

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.

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Written by Administrator | 08 November 2009

1. How will you determine the behaviors and results that will improve our safety performance?

2. How will you objectively and reliably measure these behaviors and results?

3. What analysis will you conduct that will indicate the missing or weak links in our safety system?

4. What strategies will you use to increase the consistency of safe behavior and results?

5. How do these strategies address the weak link?

6. What evidence supports your choice of these strategies?

7. How will you evaluate the success of these strategies in our company?

8. What data will you use and how will you analyze it?

9. How will you arrange for generalization to other safety practices and maintenance over the long term?

10. What experience have you had designing and implementing performance improvement systems based on the scientific principles of behavior?

Written by Administrator | 08 November 2009

These practices serve as the framework for supporting Values-Based Safety®. Executives and Sponsors must model these behaviors for the teams involved in the Values-Based Safety® implementation and for employees participating in the process. These behaviors will help you support the Design Team and Steering Committees in the organization as they bring about change the “right” way.

 

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Written by Administrator | 08 November 2009

Safety professionals have long recognized the importance of management support and involvement in achieving effective safety improvement. Petersen, for example, strongly advocates an approach in which management takes a central role in safety improvement efforts. “Management’s reaction to change determines [the] success [of change],” he says. “When upper management ‘buys in’ to the changes, it ensures success” (278). He also states, “Another way in which behavior is strongly influenced is through modeling (learning by imitation). The research on modeling tells us that if we want to maximize approach (rather than avoidance) tendencies in workers, we must exhibit that behavior ourselves” (266).

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Written by Administrator | 29 October 2009

By Terry McSween

One of the significant advances in Behavioral Safety (BBS) over the past ten years has been the documented improvement in how well companies are able to sustain such initiatives for many years. One of the keys to this success is establishing an effective Steering Committee to oversee and manage the process.

Another, perhaps less obvious factor contributing to long-term success of Behavioral Safety, is the identification of an employee to serve as the BBS "point of contact" (POC) on each crew or in each work group. A BBS POC is particularly important in organizations that are too large to have a representative from each work group on the Steering Committee. Generally, to be effective, a Steering Committee should have between eight and twelve members, with fifteen being the absolute maximum number. More than fifteen members may provide broad representation but severely compromises the effectiveness of the team for problem solving and decision-making. For such companies, identifying a POC for crews not represented on the Steering Committee is an important element for effective communication and support. Each crew or work group needs someone to serve as the POC for BBS. For example, an organization with 25 different crews will usually be better served by a Steering Committee with 12 members and 13 POC's, rather than trying to have either a Steering Committee of 25 or Steering Committee members trying to represent crews they are not regularly part of.

We have worked with some organizations that have extremely large, pre-existing Steering Committees. At best, that type of structure functions well for communication purposes but usually at the price of less effective problem solving and decision-making. We have found that it serves such organizations to move towards either (1) a smaller Steering Committee with a larger group of POC's to ensure representation and communication with every crew, or (2) multiple Steering Committees. Which option is best is largely determined by the organizational structure and whether the Steering Committees can be representative of organizational units in a logical way.

The POC is a person who champions BBS on each crew. The selection criteria for a POC are generally the same as for Steering Committee members. An employee selected to be the BBS POC should be someone who is well respected by coworkers, someone who has a reputation for their personal commitment to safety, and someone who is comfortable talking in small groups.

The POCs serve as linking pins between crews and the Steering Committee. The POC basically serves as an extension of the Steering Committee and is the conduit for communication between crews and the Steering Committee. The responsibilities are very similar to those of typical Steering Committee members, except that they do not routinely attend the monthly Steering Committee meeting. Their primary responsibility is to encourage their coworkers to participate in observations. In addition, these employees often will lead discussions related to BBS in crew safety meetings. They may, for example, review observation data and discuss action plans developed by the Steering Committee. They also ensure issues identified by their crews are clearly communicated to the Steering Committee.

Not every organization needs to worry about establishing the BBS POC function. For many of today's larger, more complex organizations, however, establishing a formal Steering Committee/POC structure may be critical to the long-term survival of a BBS process.