Why BBS Became Unpopular

When BBS first became popular, consultants, training, operating systems and other processes to affect it abounded.  Everyone wanted in on the new phase of making employees work safer and thought they had the right method to make it work and make it effective. 

The problem was that some (if not many) of the programs implemented were clearly subpar.  They didn’t work, they were costly, and frankly they caused frustration and resentment among management and the workforce.  Many of these programs were not based on the science of behavior and became negative when a “blame the worker” mentality developed. This was completely opposite of what the true meaning and direction of what BBS should have been using positive consequences to motivate and reward behavior change. 

The entire “positive consequences” piece of BBS may have also worked to help derail it.  Not having a definitive idea of what “positive consequences” really means, it was left up to the designing companies to determine what “positive consequence” to use.  This has been a problem in the safety industry for years.  Should you use an award for improved safety performance?  How often, how costly?  What award to use??  Sometimes just a sincere “thank you” for an improved safety behavior is enough to sustain the behavior.  It doesn’t always have to be a physical award.  The further stigma of traditional safety incentives and erroneous press from OSHA added to the frustration. 

The combination of those not fluent in the science of behavior with others of varying knowledge of award systems made for designing programs that failed from the start.  These failed programs also included flaws focusing on at-risk behavior and corrective feedback rather than a focus on strengthening safe behavior through positive strategies. And of course those who said they “tried BBS and it didn’t work” were justified to never do one again.  It resulted in the rise of anti-BBS sentiment in some organizations.

This is very unfortunate as BBS can be a very rewarding business strategy that produces excellent results.  To reject it because it was designed poorly is like rejecting a doctor’s prescription because you didn’t take if correctly.  Both are scientific and BBS has been proven effective but it won’t work well if it is not implemented properly.

No one really argues that sustained safety improvement requires changing behavior of your workers.  But it also requires changing the behavior of executives, managers, supervisors and front line employees alike. Behavior is how we accomplish all of the things we need to accomplish in safety. BBS is based on the proven science of behavior—the science that provides the strategies to motivate all the behaviors we need to create and sustain a safe workplace. Human error is inevitable and looking to systems like BBS can minimize the error.  Applying negative consequences will only serve to reduce the behavior you are seeking in the first place. 

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

Face to Face Safety

When you want to influence someone the best way to do it is face-to-face. When you want to build trust and loyalty with your workers, make time to talk with them.  Face-to- Face is the right way to build a safety culture. 

Behavior based safety is arguably one of the best ways to change poor safety habits into good ones.  It has been successful because it is done face to face.  Cultures with exceptional safety cultures have management that often visits with their employees about safety.  Great leaders want employees to know safety is important to management. They want to make it clear to them that they never want to put safety at risk in some attempt to drive performance.  If good performance is to be sustainable it must be done with an eye on zero accidents.

When management doesn’t want to engage their employees face-to-face about safety they send the message that “Safety Isn’t Important.”  Great safety cultures begin when you give a consistent and continuous message about the importance of safety.  Do it early and often.

Here are some examples of how to reinforce your safety message:

·       Begin new hire orientation with your explanation of your safety culture. 

·       All meetings began with safety as the first item on the agenda.

·       Regardless of the department, start every meeting with a review of safety efforts and progress. 

·       Start all training, employee appraisals and introduction of projects with a talk on safety.

·       Schedule time for supervisors, managers, etc. to be in the field or on the job and perform face-to-face safety talks

The Gallup organization and other poll groups have questioned employees about how they want to receive information at work and what their preference is for communication.

Face-to-face is always the number one answer.

Employees know management only invests time on what’s important. If their immediate boss doesn't regularly set aside time to talk safety, it's hard not to get the impression that safety doesn't matter to them.

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