Why Relationships Matter in Safety

Following is a synopsis of an interesting blog post written by Judy Agnew Ph.D., senior vice president of Aubrey Daniels International, who works closely with clients to strengthen sustainable safety cultures.  She maintains that a solid safety culture starts with good relationships between employees and management. 

From a behaviorist’s perspective, safety is fundamentally a behavioral issue.  And as such, the only way to change or improve behavior is to use a process grounded in the science of behavior.   That process has to start with a positive and trusting working relationship between employee and management.  To go beyond the basics compliance requirements of a safety process, it boils down to the discretionary effort of the employees.  Exceptional safety happens when employees are in lock step with management.  Unfortunately you won’t get this kind of discretionary effort when employees dislike, distrust or worse, fear the boss.

According to Agnew:

Discretionary effort is created through the use of positive reinforcement. Research shows that when people are recognized for what they do well around safety and when reporting problems and concerns is met with reinforcing consequences (such as joint problem solving and problem resolution), employees will be more engaged in safety.

Within the post you can see a list of behaviors that contribute to positive workplace relationship.  They can be exhibited by any worker type and will lead to improved work in general.

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

The Truth About Building Safety Habits

We have long been a proponent of using continuous diminimous awards within BBS as positive reinforcement to change safe performance into habits.  Following is a post on Aubrey Daniels International by Tim Nolan, Ph.D., a trusted advisor to business and organizational leaders. This post gives you some reasons from a psychological perspective of we feel that BBS awards can be so effective.  We hope you find it informative.

The Truth About Building Habits: No You Don't Have to Do This Forever

Many times in the course of working with clients, they hit a point of realization about using a scientific approach to behavior on the job, and it sometimes sounds like this: “You mean I have to do THIS for EVERY behavior?”  The short answer is yes and no. Let me explain.

The answer is yes in that using a scientific approach to manage behavior is simply a more precise way of doing what most leaders spend their time doing anyway. As long as any of us are in the business of dealing with the behavior of others (which is most people in the workplace today), then we will be doing some version of THIS. Applying behavioral tools like pinpointing, shaping, feedback and positive reinforcement are simply more precise and deliberate ways of doing what leaders, managers, teachers, coaches, parents, etc., are doing in the course of their everyday interactions.

The answer is also no in the sense that not every behavior requires the same level of attention and even the ones that do, don’t require that attention forever. The value of pinpointing is that it helps narrow the vast universe of behaviors that are occurring all the time, down to a few that are mission-critical for some result or outcome we are trying achieve.

Even when focused on just a few key behaviors, it’s not necessary to stay focused on them forever. The intent in focusing on those behaviors is to turn them into habits that reliably occur with little or no additional attention from anyone.  Once those habits have formed, they are maintained by naturally occurring prompts, reminders and consequences in the workplace or in your environment.  Those behaviors become part of the culture or just how we do things here.

In a more technical sense, when we target a few pinpointed behaviors we are arranging planned antecedents and consequences to initiate and maintain a desired frequency for each behavior. As that behavior reaches a desired, reliable frequency or specificity, other naturally occurring antecedents and consequences begin to take hold and maintain that behavior. When that happens we tend to say that a habit has formed.

A simple example is wearing a seatbelt while driving or riding in a car. The first few times in a car, the act of fastening a seat belt isn’t natural or particularly comfortable. But antecedents or prompts (e.g., seat belt chime from car, reminders from other people), will result in people fastening it. The feel of the belt on the body, the sound of the click as it fastens, the termination of the chime function—are all forms of consequences.  Over time, this pattern of antecedents and consequences becomes fairly routine, to the point where driving or riding in a car without a seatbelt feels awkward or uncomfortable. The bottom line: seatbelt wearing has become a habit that no longer relies on instructions, laws, public service announcements, etc., to be maintained.

The important thing about habits is that they tend to stick with almost no additional effort on anyone’s part.  They simply become how you do things.  So in that sense the answer is no, you don’t have to do this forever. You only have to do this until you have turned pinpoints into habits.

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

eSafety Awards for eLearning Safety Systems

In our last blog post we discussed The Forgetting Curve and how the value of billions of safety training dollars are at stake if you don’t reinforce that training with more training. 

We also mentioned that more training was not the only alternative to reinforcing safety training and that small safety awareness awards can be just as effective and often more cost effective as well.

One of these alternative safety award alternatives is the e-gift card.  Now with just a few clicks at your desk or from the field on your laptop or from your iPhone you can give an employee who performed a trained safety function in the proper manner an instant e-gift card.  The codes for these e-gift cards can be purchased and stored for immediate use, so you can give them instantly.  Your employee can then use them immediately online to redeem for an item from that store.

To provide even more motivation, there are some gift card award companies, like the
Award of Choice, that can provide codes that can be redeemed for over 100 of the most popular brands in the country.  This saves you the trouble of trying to determine which gift card brand to use.  An added benefit is that these Award of Choice cards can be purchased without a fee, a dollar-for-dollar value.

The next time you think about doing more training as a reinforcement strategy for training, consider using small BBS awards instead.  You’ll get the added benefit of turning the training into habits, which is in effect a 100% retention strategy.

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

Employees Forget 70% of Safety Training Within 24 Hours!

Hermann Ebbinghaus a noted German psychologist, who pioneered early studies in memory, discovered that from the point when you learn a piece of information (100% retention), retention begins to drop exponentially. He called this the “Forgetting Curve”. What that means is, without follow-up, about 70% of learning is lost and forgotten within 24 hours of learning it.

In addition, while the loss rate does slow down, some studies show that total retention a month later is only around 10-20 %!  And that of course assumes the 100% of the learning is retained initially which is likely not the case. On a good day, we are lucky if a learner starts at 80% retention.

Over the years, psychologists have completed many experiments in the field of cognitive psychology, but researchers have not been able to replicate Ebbinghaus’ work.  The forgetting curve has stood the test of time. It is now relied upon as a sound concept.

So, does this mean that 70% of the billions spent each year on safety training is wasted after 24 hours? 

There will continue to be conflicting claims about what the forgetting curve actually is, how quickly people forget, and what trainers can do about it. You often hear safety training companies cite ‘the curve’ as the reason you need their product or service as reinforcement to the initial training or you risk losing training those safety investment dollars.

Despite the confusion, you can’t afford to ignore the forgetting curve. When lack of retention is properly planned for, it becomes another design issue. But when we pretend forgetting won’t happen or assume forgetting doesn’t matter; it will become a value killer.

Training reinforcement strategies can be more than just more training which would turn into a constant process of more training in order to enhance retention…it would never end.  Another suitable and successful alternative would be to turn the training into a habit (which is essentially repeated and retained learning.)  Doing this requires using the entire behavioral model….the training, the communications, the feedback, and the positive reinforcement….an award. 

Essentially, behavior based safety is a process to enhance the safety training that turns behaviors into habits.  When you apply continuous positive reinforcement to a training issue, you can build a habit and then go on to other important training issues. Historically small reinforcement safety awards are in fact nothing more than a training reinforcement strategy. 

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net