Behavioral observation programs are a mainstay in many
safety systems that are looking to move beyond compliance and get employees
involved. The idea is pretty straightforward – have employees observe other
employees doing job tasks. The observers then judge whether the behavior is
“safe” or “unsafe” and provide immediate feedback to the employees who did the
tasks. You seem to accomplish a lot with a program such as this, including:
- Immediate and specific feedback to employees for “unsafe” behaviors, which enhances learning;
- Employees get involved in the process and take ownership of safety at the site; and,
- You get another feedback loop that you can use to identify exposures and risks at the site (you can also use it as a handy metric).
This sounds like a panacea for all your safety performance
needs. So what’s the problem?
Well, the problem with most behavioral observation programs
is that they don’t account for some blind spots that the programs tend to have,
both practical and foundational.
Let’s start with an example of the practical – First, when
it comes to identifying “safe” and “unsafe” behaviors, your employees are far
more likely to identify obvious “unsafe” behaviors that lead to smaller
accidents than they are to identify the less obvious behaviors that are more of
a grey area and, coincidentally, are more associated with serious injuries and
disasters. So, for example, behavioral observation programs are very good at
identifying whether or not employees are using the required PPE for a given
task. However, these programs are not very good at identifying whether
technical procedures that are only indirectly related to safety are being
followed or even if those procedures are adequate for the reality the employees
are facing. In cases where deviance from procedures is normalized you might
have employees note a given task as “safe” because that’s the way the job is
normally done, without realizing the risks involved. So the program provides an
unreliable data source, causing you to think that your system is “safe” when,
in reality, you are drifting toward danger.
The bottom line from a practical perspective – behavior
observation works for obvious behaviors. If “safe” and “unsafe” behaviors are
not as obvious though then the behavior observation program may be a false
indicator.
This leads to the foundational blind spot of behavior
observation programs – the programs tend to assume that behavior is either
“safe” or it is “unsafe.” This is categorically false. Behavior is inherently
tied to the context and almost any behavior you can think of, if put in another
context, is either safe or unsafe. Even the proverbial safety “no-no,” running
with scissors, is sometimes the right thing to do (medical professionals run
with scissors all the time in emergency situations).
Now it may be possible to identify a behavior that is always
unsafe (using some definition of “safe” and “unsafe”), no matter what the
context. But that’s not the point. If we really have to think hard to find
something that’s always an unsafe behavior, is the idea that behavior is either
“safe” or “unsafe” a really useful concept?
What if instead of a behavioral observation program we just
had a performance observation program? Instead of judging whether the employee
is doing things right or wrong, we just observe and try to understand how
employees are doing work. Then, we ask questions (not just about the things we
think they did wrong!), listen to stories, trying to find the best way to do
the job in the context that the job is to be done. With the rich understanding
of the reality the employees at the sharp end face, instead of telling them
that what they are doing is wrong, we give them the tools (equipment,
knowledge, time, etc.) they need to learn to adapt their behaviors to the
contexts they face. We move past the obvious things and get to the real story
of how work is performed in the organization. We move from a place of judgment
to a place of cooperation. Then we not only get the basic advantages of
traditional behavior observation programs noted above, we also eliminate the
blind spots and build a foundation of trust between ourselves and the real
source of safety in our organizations – our workers.
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