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