The Fogg Behavior Model

In 2007, BJ Fogg, PhD,  a Behavior Scientist at Stanford University, solved an important puzzle about human behavior, and called it appropriately the “Fogg Behavior Model."  As Behavior Based Safety is such an often discussed and important topic in the safety industry, we thought looking at this model from that perspective might be interesting.

​Fogg’s expressed his model as: 

​B=MAP

The solution is deceptively simplifies and shows that three elements must converge at the same moment for a behavior to occur: Motivation, Ability, and a Prompt. When a behavior does not occur, at least one of those three elements is missing. Fogg maintains that you can learn to think about behavior in this way in two minutes and that it applies to all types of behavior, in all cultures, for people at any age. It's universal. 

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The Fogg Behavior Model supposedly makes it easier to understand behavior in general. What was once a fuzzy mass of psychological theories now becomes organized and specific when viewed through the FBM. 

​The FBM highlights three principal elements, each of which has sub-components. Specifically, the FBM outlines Core Motivators (Motivation), Simplicity Factors (Ability), and the types of Prompts.

Motivation:  There are three Core Motivators: Sensation, Anticipation, and Belonging. Each of these has two sides: pleasure/pain, hope/fear, acceptance/rejection. 

Ability:  In order to perform a target behavior, a person must have the ability to do so.

Prompt: Tells people to “do it now”. Without a Prompt, the target behavior will not happen. Sometimes a Prompt can be external, like an alarm sounding. Other times, the Prompt can come from our daily routine: Walking through the kitchen may trigger us to open the fridge. 

From a safety perspective let’s assume that your various motivators are in place, and all the necessary training to ensure ability is ongoing. At that point the safe behavior will not happen unless you have some kind of prompt. To do so, you need to ask people to do simple things. Once achieved, the simple behavior then opens the door to harder behaviors.

This may be an oversimplification of FBM, but it seems that it can all start with simple communications, with prompts toward more and more safe behaviors using positive reinforcement at each step of the way. 

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Incidents v Accidents v Near Misses

Capturing and analyzing all data related to accidents and incidents are how safety programs are most often judged, but it’s only part of the picture.

While tracking all incidents is a critical aspect of managing your safety performance data, tracking near misses can also have a surprisingly big impact on safety performance.  Many safety professionals know that focusing efforts on near misses can result in reducing future incidents.  

Why Smaller Incidents Matter

Near misses and other less serious incidents might not seem like important events to track, but they have a surprisingly big impact.

Non-accident incidents matter.  Consider the Loss Causation Theory that discusses the implications of the cost of an injury and other costs that stem from that accident.  In 1985 Bird & Germaine depicted an iceberg as a way to show the true costs of accidents.  The tip of the iceberg represented $1 in direct medical and illness costs, followed underneath by many other uninsured ledger costs which amounted to another $5 to $50, and under that more uninsured misc. costs of $1 to $3.  In essence for every dollar spent dealing with an injury, there is anywhere from $6 to $53 in unrelated expenses.

Another popular theory developed by Herbert Heinrich in the 1930's used a pyramid to show

how incidents and accidents relate to each other in terms of both frequency and severity.  The relationship depicted in the pyramid reveals that severe accidents and injuries are often the culmination of several less serious incidents.

By taking steps to reduce the number of risky behaviors and near misses, we are also preventing serious injuries. Conversely, employers or safety professionals who dismiss or don't pay attention to near misses can expect the rate of recordable injuries, lost work days, and fatalities to increase.

Many safety professionals today use small cost effective awards to motivate their workers to report near misses.  The award costs are small; the potential savings that come from stopping risky behaviors at the root can be tremendous!

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To Prevent All Injuries…You Need a Safety Angel

I’ve been involved in the safety industry from the perspective of safety incentives for many years, and have heard the statement “All injuries can be prevented” argued for decades.  At times the statement evolves into “All injuries can and should be prevented.”  That would be nice if it were true.

I suppose in theory these may be partially true, but in reality countless millions of injuries occur every day, everywhere and this has been happening forever.  Injuries are pervasive, but perhaps it’s the “everywhere” and “forever” that’s missing from a lot of the current theory regarding accidents and injuries on the job.

In order for the statement "All injuries can be prevented" to be true, everybody would have to be watching, doing and thinking about what they’re doing whenever they are moving (tough to get injured while you’re sleeping?).  Because once they move or start to move, the only thing that tells them what they could be moving into is their eyes or their mind, with the exception of planes and ships that also use radar and sonar.

Many years ago I asked a very experienced safety veteran what he would get if he could have anything he wanted to help prevent accidents; his answer was a “safety angel” on the shoulder of every one of his employees all day every day constantly whispering in the ear of his people to “Be Safe!”  Then he said even with that, there would still be accidents.  None of us could prove we have been using our eyes and our mind 100 percent of the time throughout the entire course of a business day.  And it’s at the one instant when we don’t that the accident happens. 

To err is human; we all make mistakes some more than others.  And everyone has made injury-causing mistakes and errors when our eyes or mind is not on task. How badly we got hurt is usually a function of luck.  Our behavior dictates whether we have an accident.  Not having our minds and our eyes on the task dictates whether we have an accident. 

You can argue that all injuries, as they relate to people being totally watchful and aware, are preventable.  Or is that just the angel on the shoulder?

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