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

Who will conduct the observations?

Terry E. McSween

In developing the observation procedure, the first question to address is who will conduct the observations. If your team has decided that observations are at least initially to be a management responsibility, then you will need to decide which levels of management should participate.

If you have elected to go with employee observations, you will need to consider how the employees will schedule their observations. You have at least three options:

• Rotate the responsibility among all employees
• Assign the observations to specific positions (e.g. senior operators, lead personnel, or fire watch personnel)
• Rotate them among safety team members.

If employees are to do the observations, team members may initially conduct the observations, then rotate other employees onto the safety team.

How often will observations be conducted?

The frequency of observations is important. The risk associated with your business should determine the whether the observations are daily, weekly or monthly. If you are in a high risk business, then you should probably conduct daily observations. Most manufacturing organizations will want to conduct weekly observations. You may also have different frequency of observations for different areas or levels. You might require supervisors to conduct weekly observations of their areas, while upper level managers and staff conduct monthly observations.

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