By Daniel J. Moran, Ph.D., BCBA-D, Senior Vice President
The following story and discussion is an excerpt from the book Building Safety Commitment by Dr. Daniel J. Moran.
My buddy Joe has a mint condition ’66 Chevelle. The engine is supercharged, the interior is clean, and the paint job is a deep, maroon color that looks like the last few seconds of a sunset. The car is truly “suped-up” and Joe did all the work himself. I took one ride in that car and it will be my last one. Let me give you some background to explain why.
Joe and I got our driver’s licenses when we turned 17-years-old. In New York State, you earn your license later in age than in many other areas of the country. I think the politicians believe that older drivers are safer drivers. Well, I’m here to tell you that isn’t necessarily true. For the first year of my driving career, Joe and I were not the safest drivers on the road. In fact, for the first year of my driving career, I never wore a seat belt. Even when I was a passenger in Joe’s beat-up cars, I didn’t buckle up. It really didn’t seem necessary at the time. I had never experienced a car accident in my life and it seemed like such a long shot that I’d get into a wreck. So for the first full year of driving, I didn’t wear a safety belt.
Shortly after I turned 18, New York State passed a “Click It or Ticket” law. This new rule stated that if a police officer witnessed you driving without a seat belt, you’d be given a $50 fine. I did not have $50 to spare when I was a teenager, so this was a very effective threat for me. I started wearing my seat belt more often . . . or at least whenever I was in a place where I thought I might get caught. So when I drove around busy areas, especially in the daytime, I would click it to avoid the ticket. Even as a passenger in Joe’s car, I’d put my seat belt on so neither of us would get in trouble. I was doing what industry researchers call “safety compliance.”
Safety compliance is the most basic way of getting people to behave safely. Whenever authority figures put negative consequences in place (a fine, a pink slip, or a tongue lashing), and people start acting safely because they don’t want to be punished, they are “complying” with the rule. If the reason you wear your PPE or follow safety guidelines on the job is because you don’t want to get into trouble, get a write-up, or get fired, then you have chosen to comply with the safety rules. Essentially I was complying with the seat belt laws when I was 18-years-old. I wasn’t wearing it because I chose to protect my personal safety. (I didn’t value safety—too young.) Instead, I was only protecting my wallet from losing fifty bucks. Lots of companies use the safety compliance approach. I’ve talked to lots of workers who wear their PPE because of company fear tactics: “I don’t want to lose my job, so I make sure I wear my goggles when the boss is around.” That is the core of safety compliance. I’m not saying that this is a bad approach to safety, but I am saying if a company is only using this kind of compliance-based approach, it is incomplete and only partially effective.
You probably have already realized a problem with safety compliance: when you aren’t likely to get “caught” acting unsafely, then you aren’t likely to comply. If no-one is watching, you might try to get away with cutting corners on a safety procedure. While it is true that putting negative consequences in place can influence safety, it doesn’t always do a great job at it because there are times when people do not worry about getting caught by an authority figure. When unsupervised, workers who have no personal investment in their own safety might not maintain important work standards. In addition, when you just have these kinds of negative consequences in place, no-one has any incentive to go above and beyond to improve safety! Workers who only comply with safety rules rarely demonstrate that they personally value safety. We’ll continue talking about compliance and how to improve safety in a little while. Let’s return to my erratic history with seat belts.
After I spent another few years in New York, and complied with the seat belt laws the whole time, I moved to the Midwest to raise my family, find a job, and start a business. I grew roots in the suburbs of Chicago with my wife and two children, and my career started to blossom. Life was good; however, one day I started feeling nostalgic for New York City. I don’t know what I missed about New York. Maybe I was yearning for traffic jams, inflated prices, or a decent slice of pizza. Or perhaps I had grown tired of being treated so kindly by Midwestern folks, and simply thought a visit to “the old neighborhood” would help me recalibrate my healthy level of self-esteem. I decided to spend a long weekend in New York, so I called my old friend Joe to let him know I was coming home. He told me not to rent a car for my New York vacation because he wanted to be my chauffer for the weekend. He said he had a “surprise” for me.
After the plane landed in LaGuardia airport, I got off the plane and started to absorb the New York City energy. I felt my pace quicken as I walked through the terminal. I don’t know if I was walking faster because I was excited to start my vacation or because I didn’t want to get trampled underfoot for being a slow-moving tourist in New York. When I walked out the airport exit, I saw Joe and his “surprise.” He was sitting in his beautiful 1966 Chevelle. He jumped out of the classic automobile to say hello and help me with my bags. I walked around his car admiring his prized possession, and then he invited me into the machine. We were going to go cruising and I was excited to be riding shotgun. As I slid into the car, Joe put the car in gear and we started to roll out of the pickup area.
I reached for my seat belt and I couldn’t find it on the first try. The buckle wasn’t where I thought it should be. I started glancing around, looking over my shoulder, digging under the seat and behind my back to find the seat belts. I looked at Joe and he was already laughing at me. He said, “This car was built in 1966. There’s no seat belts in a ’66 Chevelle, man!”
I was uneasy, which is not the way I wanted to start out my vacation. I had ridden shotgun with Joe for hundreds of hours of my life without a single fender-bender. I personally had driven around these roads for thousands of hours as a teenager and I never wore a seat belt back in those days. In addition, I still had never been in a car crash in my life. So there I was, looking at the dashboard of this classic car, feeling a sense of dread because I couldn’t buckle up. And I was asking myself, “Why am I so motivated to wear a seat belt?”
I remember telling Joe that I was uncomfortable without a seat belt. He called me a few names in a special language that only New Yorkers seem fluent in, and then said, “We won’t get a ticket! This car is above the law. And even if we got one, I promise that I’ll pay it!”
With that phrase, Joe took away any of the concerns of safety compliance. Authority figures had no negative consequences for us. And even if we did get in trouble, I didn’t have to pay the fine. But I didn’t feel much better about the situation.
Can you think about why I was still motivated to wear a seat belt?
If you asked me that question, I would tell you about my own personal motivations to act safely. I would tell you that what I value in this world has a great impact on my actions. I have a family I love and an occupation I enjoy and both act as major influences on my motivation to buckle up. I have people and things that I care about that make me want to protect my health and well-being. The purpose of my safe actions was personal and very clear to me: I care about my family and my career. I wanted to be safe for my own reasons. I was acting as my own authority. In other words, the police didn’t have to look out for me because I was policing myself. I didn’t need to have a negative consequence hanging over my head. Wearing a seat belt was not about sidestepping a fine, but stepping toward a life guided by my values.
Talking about values can become complicated, but I want to keep the conversation simple. Values are the ideas we choose to believe in, and help guide us toward doing what we care about. When people talk about their values, they typically speak about ideas they choose to be important such as honesty, family, health, making a difference, inventiveness, leadership, liberty, integrity, and altruism. There are hundreds of principles you can use to guide your actions. Values are the key principles we use to help us link our actions to a sense of purpose in our lives. In other words, values are what we choose to believe to be important and these ideals help guide us toward doing what we care about. Life is full of choices, and values help guide our choices.
Riding in the ’66 Chevelle put me in a situation where I had to make a choice. Joe wanted to chauffer me around all weekend in a car where I could not act in a way that was consistent with my values. Since I really care about providing for my children and being with my family, I couldn’t continue to ride around in a vehicle that might jeopardize my ability to do that. Because the job I love doing is also linked to the well-being of my clients and employment of my colleagues, it was not appropriate for me to ride around in a car that didn’t protect me from the risk of injury. Safety had become personal because I was clear about what was important in my life. Riding around in a muscle car all weekend didn’t mean a darn thing compared to protecting what I care about. I told that to Joe, and he understood.
What I Care About
Now that you know a bit more about my values, I’m hopeful you are willing to take a look at your values. I realize there aren’t many safety articles that ask people about their personal values, but that is exactly what I’m going to do now. You see, when you clarify your own values, safety becomes personally relevant, and then safety motivation significantly improves.
We said that values are the ideas we choose to believe in, and help guide us toward doing what we care about. In order to get a broad based view of your values, you can simply answer the following question: What do you want your life to be about?
Obviously, knowing what you value will contribute to your successful action and improve your quality of life. After all, if you are not clear on what is vital and meaningful in your life, your willingness to produce any level of contribution to the world will be very low. When you are clear on why you value safety, it becomes much easier for you to act safely.
Order the book, Building Safety Commitment by Dr. Daniel J. Moran from our store. The aim of the book is to help people learn how to improve their commitment to safety, to learn what their own obstacles are to acting safely, and overcome those obstacles with new, proven methods for changing behavior for the better.