Improving Your Safety
With a Behavioral Approach
(Reprinted from Hydrocarbon Processing)

Suggestions

Terry E. McSween

Suggestion 1: Don't use a cookbook approach. This article provides a set of guidelines, but your success depends on your ability to plan the application of these ideas in the context of your organization's culture. This suggestion pertains to the approach described in this article as well as to comparable approaches from various consulting organizations around the country. Don't simply buy a package. Make sure you use the key elements to develop a system that meets the needs of your organization. On the other hand, don't be too quick to discard key elements just because they are difficult to implement or maintain in your organization.

Suggestion 2: Plan and clearly define management's role. The observation process requires time and a great deal of effort. It will require active support from all levels of management. Pay special attention to the suggestions for involving management and defining management's role in the process. Management's role will be the critical factor in both the long-term success of your observation process as well as the day-to-day elements of your safety improvement process.

Suggestion 3: Maximize participation in the final design. The only way to create ownership is through meaningful involvement in the design process. This process requires a high level of involvement and has several options for ways to involve people. Don't make the mistake of designing a safety process in a vacuum and then trying to implement the program by mandate. Involve people in the design at each stage. Then have those who assist with the design take it back to their work areas and get input and suggestions from their colleagues.

Suggestion 4: Create a different checklist for each area. The research studies all used checklists of specific safe behaviors that were job- and area-specific. Unless you are in a small facility, do not try to develop a generic checklist that works for all areas. Maintenance has different safety requirements than a laboratory, for example, and their checklists should look different. To maximize the value of the checklists, they should be explicit enough to address the specific safe practices of different job functions.

Suggestion 5: Don't create a bureaucracy around the data. The value of this process is in getting everyone to pay attention to on-the-job safety, not in creating a paper storm. Build informal systems of accountability based on the observable parts of the system. Don't create an elaborate system of paper reports. Do pay attention to the safety process during informal contact with individuals in the work areas and during formal meetings at each level of the organization.

Suggestion 6: Use classroom training only when needed. Place emphasis on designing a training process that satisfies your needs, not putting all employees through observer training. Provide enough training to create the understanding that people need to support the process. Also, don't think of training as strictly a classroom process. When training observers, for example, a mentoring process is often more effective. Use training only when it is appropriate, and select an appropriate process for delivering the training that's needed.

Suggestion 7: Persevere. Don't quit – ever! False starts characterize the implementation of any significant new process. Implementation is often two steps forward and one step back. The key to success is continuous improvement. Learn from each of your steps so that you can do it better the next time. Just keep fine-tuning your process until you achieve zero accidents. Then strive to maintain that level of safety excellence.

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This article first appeared in Hydrocarbon Processing (August 1993) and is reproduced here with permission.