Behavior & Culture
Living with my safety behavior…
Many of us go
about our daily lives believing that no matter what we do we will always be
safe, but if we are honest we know that this is a complacent and negative
safety behavior, since accidents will happen no matter what we believe. But
there are a few of us that behave differently, who pay attention to the world
around them and have a positive safety behavior, in the fear that something
could happen and take extra care in everything they do.
Every year there
seems to be more incidents and injuries at work, and yet more fatalities on the
roads, and even at home we are not safe as we suffer more accidents. We have
more safety rules than ever before, we employ every conceivable technology to
keep us safe, we have countless safety campaigns, and yet perhaps we are no
safer – why? Could it be our behavior, and if it is, where does our safety behavior
come from?
1. MY SAFETY BEHAVIOR
We all have to live
with our own safety behavior whether at work, home or at play. But at the same
time we have to live with the safety behavior of others, and they with ours. Do
we copy the behavior of others, or do we influence their behavior, and the
answer is probably both. But we may not be aware that there is a serious
process going on of mutual behavior copying, we copy others and they in turn
copy us. Copying behavior in a group of people is complex interaction, and many
eminent psychologists have tried to define the process. What we know is that some
behaviors will be successful and copied over and over, but others may be tried
a few times and then fade away.
One example of
successful behavior copying is the mobile phone, and we both hate and love them
at the same time. Twenty years ago only the very rich owned a mobile phone, yet
today more then half the world’s population whether rich or poor use them every
day. The key to successful behavior copying is routed in ‘effort vs. benefit’,
it requires very little effort to use a
mobile phone and human beings love to communicate with each other.
Another example
is breaking the speed limit while driving, and researchers from around the
world state that on average more than 90% of all drivers break a speed limit at
least once a day. It requires little human effort to make a car go fast and the
benefit is the high speed thrill and adrenalin rush. All drivers know that
speed can kill, but drivers may perceive that this happens only to the unlucky
few, and so the benefit far outweighs the risk or effort. The interesting
copying issue is that all drivers feel more comfortable breaking the speed
limit when there are others on the road doing the same thing. In other words,
we may feel safer copying the bad behavior of others, than doing a bad behavior
on our own. Why is this, since the degree of safety is about the same? The
answer is that we feel safer in a crowd or a group, and so we love to copy each
other.
An important
factor in copying as group behavior is the way the behavior is accepted. When
there is high prevalence or common occurrence of a particular behavior such as
using mobile phones, where the perception is that we do not fit in unless we
own one, and psychologists call this a ‘descriptive norm’. The other case is
the high acceptability of a behavior, such as some people are overweight
because they eat too much, this is seen as acceptable behavior and this is
termed as an ‘injunctive norm’.
So it seems that
all behaviors whether good or bad, descriptive or injunctive norms, are firmly linked to ‘effort
vs. benefit’, the personal benefit we all get from the actions we take, and the
additional benefit we get by copying to fit in with the crowd and to be like
others. Crowd psychology is social facilitation where ordinary persons can
typically gain direct power or strongly influence behavior by acting
collectively.
There is yet
another behavioral dynamic to our safety behavior, and that is our behavior in
a group or when we know we are being observed, compared to our behavior when we
are alone. In other words, ‘True
safety behavior is what happens when no one is watching…’ Most people would
agree that some of our behaviors in a group or a crowd may be completely
different when we are alone. So why do people have two different behavioral
sets, alone and not-alone? Some
psychologists refer our behavior when we are alone as ‘antecedent-behavior’,
and is routed in the knowledge and customs we learned from our parents,
teachers and forebears when we were young. Our behavior in a group or a crowd
is often referred to as ‘subsequent-behavior’, which is the knowledge and
customs we learned later in life influenced by our peers, friends, colleagues
and society.
So arrive at a
holistic view of our true safety behavior we must look at our mutually
dependent behavior within a group or a crowd and also our non-dependent
behavior when we are alone.
2. BEHAVIOR
LEARNING
Which safety
behaviors are safe and which are unsafe, and if we know that, how do we selectively
direct the copying behavior in a group of people. To do that we must first
understand how do we learn behavior?
There is overt
learning or traditional education, which is teaching, training, demonstration
and mentoring, by cognitive information absorption into our brains? We see it,
hear it, feel it and so we understand and remember it.
Then there is covert
learning which strongly influences our group behavior, by subliminal
information absorption into our brains. This includes copying or emulating others,
such as our parents, our friends, and peers. We may not be even aware that we
see it, hear it, or feel it, and we may not even understand it, yet we still
remember it and repeat it over and over.
One example of
covert learning is when we all learned to walk. Unlike other animal species,
behavioral researchers say that walking may not be an instinctive action in
humans. But how do we learn to walk, since we are too young to talk and
understand what our parents say to us, and the answer seems to be that we need
the visual stimuli to watch other humans walking and so we copy it.
Another covert
learning example is the clothing we chose to buy and wear. When we are at a
clothing store our selection is not just based on price, and is more firmly
routed in the current fashion of the moment. We have seen others wearing a
similar or identical clothing item and so we choose it, but how much of our
thought process is individual selection and how much is just copying – a ‘Xerox
moment’.
We all have
‘Xerox moments’ every day and they may strongly influence our behavior without
our knowledge, and more importantly affect our safety behavior.
3. PHYSICAL
PROCESS SAFETY & PSYCHOLOGICAL BEHAVIORAL SAFETY
What is physical
process safety and psychological behavioral safety and what is the difference. An
example of physical process safety is putting a handrail on a staircase and
another is fitting seatbelts in cars, in other words, safe or unsafe
conditions.
Psychological behavioral
safety is getting people to use the handrail when the go down the staircase and
to wear the seatbelt when the car is moving, in other words, safe or unsafe
acts.
Physical process
safety has been around for many hundreds of years in one form or another, and
over the past four decades with the advent of new technology, safety
legislation, rules, codes and procedures, physical process safety has
dramatically improved in almost every company and organization in most countries
of the world.
A hundred years
ago people were more likely to die due to physical process safety measures not
being in place than due to individual behavior. But since physical process
safety is now so good, people are more likely to die due to their own safety
behavior.
To quote a
proverb that exists in many languages of the world, “…We can lead a horse to
water, but we cannot make him drink”. This illustrates the ineffectiveness and
inherent weakness of physical process safety on its own, when psychological behavioral
safety is not in place.
4. TOTAL SAFETY
The definition
of a ‘total safety world’ is when both ‘physical process safety’ and ‘psychological
behavioral safety’ are both in balance; and a ‘singular safety world’ is when
we only focus on just one. Many current safety researchers and psychologists
agree that we are living ‘singular safety world’ by focusing heavily on physical
process safety, with little or no attention paid psychological behavioral
safety.
For the sake of
convenience, if we say that 50% of total safety is related to physical process
safety, and 50% is related to psychological behavioral safety, then in a singular
safety world, we are at best only half way to where we need to be.
5. SAFETY
CULTURE
The word ‘culture’
means many different things to lots of people, but the dictionary definition
says it is the ‘customs’ of a group or society, and the definition of ‘customs’
means ‘normal behavior’. So safety-culture means our normal safety behavior in
group or a crowd and also when we are alone. But how does safety-culture influence
our safety behavior and to what extent?
- Macro Safety-Culture –
this is usually the safety culture of a large group of people, company or
organization, and generally requires compliant behavior using rules and
procedures, and may also develop initiatives and directives that may or
may not strongly influence the normal behavior of small groups or individuals.
- Micro Safety-Culture –
this is usually the safety culture of a small to moderate group of people,
and generally requires compliant behavior using norms and customs often
irrespective rules and procedures, and commonly strongly influences the
normal behavior of a few people or single individual.
- Nano Safety-Culture –
this is the safety culture of a single person and compliant behavior
within a group or a crowd is often weakly influenced by macro safety
culture, and strongly influenced by micro safety culture; and when the
individual is alone, may or may not be the influenced by either.
So our safety
culture can be described as a mixture of mutually dependent and non-dependent
behaviors. However, all cultures irrespective of size have beliefs and values,
and the majority of cultures have a high confidence and certainty in their
beliefs, and equally a high importance and significance in their values. So
beliefs and values have a major influence in behavior in any culture and foster
a strong sense of belonging and pride in members.
But all cultures
want to ‘show and glow’ and see themselves as the ‘best of the best’ compared
to others, but this has its upside and downside. Often cultures assume they are
a perfect group or organization and do not want to admit to any bad behaviors,
often described as ‘culture pride’. This means that most cultures tend to hide
mistakes and do not openly admit errors. This tendency can be very dangerous
when it comes to safety, since there is often no clear threshold of what is bad
or good safety behavior within the culture, as the norm is to hide anything
bad. The consequence is that when a culture
focuses on the ‘safety record’ of the culture and not the ‘safety’ of the
culture members, near misses will be routinely unrecorded and unresolved,
leading ultimately to potentially serious accidents and incidents.
6. HABITS AND
ATTITUDE
Psychologists
may define a habit as being our regular tendency or practice, and also our mental
attitude that influences a repetitive behavior. While by comparison the
definition of attitude means the mental process or way of thinking that influences
both our repetitive and non-repetitive behavior. So although habits and
attitude are firmly linked they are not the same, and so we can summarize
attitude as our thought processes that influences all types of behavior, and
habits just as routine behavior.
As discussed
earlier, our individual behavior is routed in effort vs. benefit; and also our
behavior in a group or culture is often based on copying from others; and both
can strongly influence our attitude, and as a consequence also our habits. But
whether at work, home or at play, there are other subtle dynamic forces that
can influence our attitude and thus our behavior.
- Conformity – the
yearning to be like or equal to our peers, and so by personal choice we
copy the behavior of others
- Compliance – we choose
to observe and copy behavioral norms even though it may not be our
personal choice
- Obedience – we must obey
behavioral rules or laws irrespective of personal choice
How do we learn
habits, or perhaps more importantly, how does an initial action get repeated
over and over and then become a habit? Do we have a cognitive thought process
going on when we first complete the action and then again each time we repeat
it, or is there a more subliminal low level process going on that we don’t
usually pay much attention to, and we just do the action without thinking.
Figure 7.1 below
shows an approximation of the psychologist’s model of the habit learning
process. We start with a belief in something is good for us, then we make an
action, and if the result is a negative bad experience we tend not to repeat
it, but if we have a positive good experience, we have the tendency to repeat
it over and over until eventually it becomes a habit.
However, the
process described above seems only to fit habit learning as individuals, when
we have the belief and we make the action ourselves. But when we copy the
behavior of others in a group or culture, we tend not to question the result of
our action and always assume that it will be positive good experience, since
others have decided that for us. Figure 7.2 below shows an approximation of the
copying behavioral process, where habit learning is much simpler and faster.
When we copy the
behavior of others we tend to have the comfortable and complacent belief that
our actions are safe, since others around us are doing the same thing. However,
if the action itself is unsafe, copying the behavior over and over means that
everyone one in the group or culture will at risk. This tendency for behavioral
copying is like a time bomb ticking away and is so often the cause of large
numbers of incidents, ranging from minor accidents to major disasters.
8. RISK AND
HAZARDS
Hazard simply
means a danger, and risk is just the measure of how much danger we are exposed
to, yet in terms of our safety behavior these two words are so often confused,
interchanged and misunderstood. Consider the hazard and risk of holding a hand
grenade bomb in one hand and in the other hand, a can of gasoline. Most of us
would be extremely nervous holding the hand grenade bomb despite the fact that
the safety pin is in place, yet most of us would be very comfortable holding
the gasoline. But from a physical prospective, both the hand grenade bomb and
the can of gasoline have about the same explosive energy, and so we should be
equally nervous holding either, but in reality we are not.
In terms of the
hand grenade bomb, we have a correct perception of the hazard but our measure
of the risk is not; and in the case of the can of gasoline, both our hazard
perception and risk measurement are underestimated. This example tells us we
modify our safety behavior based on our understanding of the hazard and risk,
but if our understanding is incorrect, then by default our safety behavior is
also incorrect.
However, risk
measurement always requires us to have a thought process, exposure vs. danger.
But as discussed earlier, if we copy behavior from others then we will have
bypassed this critical step to ensure our safety. This type of copying behavior
can be classified as ‘pure complacency’, since it does not realize the
‘behavior-consequence’ connection of an action. In other words, there are no
checks and balances of exposure vs. danger, and the individual may unaware
there is any risk attached to it.
9. UNSAFE
CONDITIONS AND UNSAFE BEHAVIOR
It is useful to
discuss ‘unsafe conditions’ and ‘unsafe behavior’ in terms of ‘copying
behavior’. But first we must realize that ‘unsafe conditions’ are linked ‘physical
process safety’; and ‘unsafe behavior’ is linked to ‘psychological behavioral
safety’, as discussed earlier.
- Unsafe behavior – is
an action by a person that is not safe, whether knowingly or unknowingly
aware of the hazard or risk
- Unsafe condition – is
physical circumstance in a location which is not safe
A wet floor in
an office corridor is an unsafe condition, and becomes an unsafe behavior when
humans are allowed to walk on the floor while it is still wet. This illustrates
that it is most dangerous when unsafe conditions and unsafe behavior are
combined together. Moreover, it is equally dangerous when unsafe conditions are
knowingly allowed to persist; or humans are allowed to enter a known unsafe
area without appropriate safeguards.
Investigations
of many incidents from around the world whether small or major, often reveal
that and unsafe conditions and/or unsafe behavior existed for some considerable
period before incident occurred, and also played a significant role in the
causation of the incident. But why was this allowed to happen and was it
attributable to ‘behavioral copying’?
Analysis of this
problem reveals that humans are quite comfortable and complacent in unsafe
conditions when they observe many others around them doing the same thing; and
equally humans quickly accept unsafe behavior when they see it being repeated
all around them on a daily basis. This is a common psychological condition and
is clear example of behavioral copying, and as discussed earlier, people feel
safer in a crowd or a group irrespective of the level or hazard or risk.
10. INFLUENCING SAFETY
BEHAVIOR
There are many
tried and tested methods of influencing safety behavior permanently or
temporarily, some of which results in good safety behavior and some in bad
safety behavior. Being lazy and taking shortcuts is a common example of routine
bad safety behavior, which may have been copied from others or simply developed
by an individual. An accident in the workplace might spur others to be more
careful, but for how much or how long depends very much on the prevailing local
safety culture.
10.1 Safety
Rules
We are all used
to safety rules, but history shows that they tend to focus on physical safety, since
much easier to mandate the presence of physical safety measures than to
regulate people’s safety behavior. Building codes and fire codes almost
exclusively focus on physical safety, but there are very few codes to tell us
how to behave safely in a building on a daily basis, and other than immediate evacuation,
how to behave safely in a fire.
By comparison, road
safety rules are a mixture of both physical safety and behavioral safety, such
as, ‘do not exceed the speed limit’ is behavioral safety; and ‘vehicle tires in
good condition’ and ‘brakes are working’ is physical safety.
So in essence, although
there are some behavioral safety rules, the largest majority are for physical
safety. Every year we seem to add more and more physical safety rules in the
hope that it will make us safer, but in reality they have a diminishing return,
since they rarely make us behave any safer.
But how
effective are safety rules at influencing safety behavior? We cannot do without
them since they serve as a baseline for all safety, but they are only one
element in our total safety behavior.
10.2 Reward and
Punishment
Many behavioral psychologists
throughout the world have written countless times on whether reward or
punishment is the better at influencing behavior, and yet more say that the effectiveness
of both may work well in the short term but had little effect in the long term.
Why is this? The most probable answer is people may obey a new rule for a time,
but some will eventually find way to circumvent the rule and resume their
former behavior.
The same is true
of reward, as people may for a time enjoy getting something good for behaving well,
but eventually the excitement of the reward diminishes and they resume their
former behavior.
But in terms of
influencing safety behavior, both punishment and reward often have a finite
lifespan. However, they are very useful at rapidly creating a safety impact in
the minds of people and so we cannot do without them and so are an essential
part of our safety behavior.
10.3 Campaigns and
Initiatives
Campaigns and
initiatives are a very useful way of introducing new ideas and ways of
improving safety, and also to remind us of safety issues that we might have
forgotten. However, in order to influence safety behavior effectively, we must
create the right balance. Too many campaigns or initiatives in a short space of
time will overburden people and may even confuse them, and too few may often
lead us to forget about safety.
But the
campaigns or initiatives with the least impact and are generally those that
have been repeated over and over, and so to be effective they need to be as
fresh as possible with new ideas or new angles to get the safety message
across. Nevertheless, from an effort vs. benefit point of view, campaigns and
initiatives are often an excellent inexpensive way of creating a big impact
with minimal effort and are a good tool to influence our safety behavior.
10.4 Safety
Leadership
How many times
have we heard from history that the world’s greatest leaders always lead from
the front? The same is very true of safety behavior, if any leader doesn’t
practice safety, doesn’t believe in safety and doesn’t show safety, then the
followers will almost certainly copy this bad safety behavior.
So true safety
leadership is a major element in influencing safety behavior, and leaders
whether at home, work or play need to realize that their behavior will quickly
influence many others. Leaders and followers alike are well used to the
concepts of conformity, compliance and obedience, but what few people realize
is that leaders ‘inspire’ their followers whether for the good or bad, and this
can an extremely powerful force to sublimely influence behavior, hence the
proverb, ‘follow the leader’.
So to influence
good safety behavior, leaders should treat safety as ‘equal’ in everything they
think and do, and it should be embedded ‘core value’ in their lives and not as
an ‘occasional priority’.
10.5 Integrated Safety
Measures
Integrated safety
measures are recent idea to improve our safety behavior and they are slowly
becoming more popular. One example of this idea is electronic seatbelt
monitoring systems in modern cars. In older cars without the system, it was up
to the driver or passenger to remember to wear the seatbelt or not, in newer
cars the electronic monitoring systems sounds an audible alarm after a few
seconds as a reminder to wear the seatbelt. This system subliminally modifies
human behavior since it does not rely on a person to consciously remember safe
behavior. Another example is the audible speed reminders on modern cars, which
automatically informs the driver that a speed limit has been exceeded, without
the need of the driver to look at the speedometer.
There are older
and less automatic integrated safety measures that have been around for some
time, such as a completing a safety checklist before a task, but they rely on
fallible human memory to remember to complete the checklist.
Automatic or
manual integrated safety measures are a very powerful way of forcing good
behavior, and as long as they do not impede our daily lives too much, then they
should be used wherever possible to influence our safety behavior.
10.6 Sudden
Events
Sudden or
unexpected events such as major disasters, or even an accident that affects a
close friend, colleague or family member, can often have a very profound effect
on the safety behavior of others. How long the effect lasts depends on the
person and also how they perceive the importance of the event.
The improvement
in safety behavior can range from a paradigm life changing shift, to only a
slight modification that lasts only a short period of time. As tragic and
regretful as major disasters and serious accidents are, their message should
not be forgotten and we should constantly remind ourselves to maintain good
safety behavior.
We must also not
forget that most changes in safety laws and rules are as a direct result of
major disasters and serious accidents, and so we should use the lessons learned
to influence our daily safety behavior.
10.7 Changing Bad Behavior
As discussed
earlier, any behavior when repeated over and over quickly turns into a habit. But
breaking a bad behavior that has become a habit is often very difficult. One
example of this is smoking cessation, and for some people it is extremely hard
if not impossible to do.
Some
psychologists say that the steps in breaking a habit are, first gain the will
to change, and then second, make the physical change (adopt the attitude get
the behavior). Other psychologists claim it is better the other way around,
firstly make the physical change and then the will to change soon follows
(adopt the behavior get the attitude). But both groups of psychologists seem to
agree to suddenly stop a habit does not work, and for the long term it is
better to substitute a good behavior for a bad behavior. One example of this
smoking cessation, to suddenly stop smoking is almost impossible for some
people, and better results are obtained from introducing a substitute behavior,
such as chewing gum to occupy the person’s mouth instead of smoking a
cigarette.
So the key
element in changing bad behavior, whether individually or collectively in a
crowd or group, is introducing a substitute good behavior in order to break the
bad habit.
10.7 Behavior
Initiating
‘Behavior
initiating’ or ‘seeding’ is a never ending subliminal process that operates in
a group or crowd of people. It’s the process of one person or a small number of
persons initiating a new or changed behavior, which gets copied over and over,
both consciously and unconsciously, within a group, crowd or culture.
One well-known
historical example of this process is hairstyles, someone may decide to have
shorter length hair and with time most people adopt the same style. Hair length
seems to be cyclic, shorter and then longer, and pictures of humans over the
decades show the typical hair length of that era, copied by millions.
Behavior
initiating also applies to safety behavior, if one person decides to adopt an
unsafe habit, then it may be copied over and over until most people in the
group have the same bad safety behavior. Psychologists often refer to this as
the ‘power-of-one’ or the ‘bad-apple syndrome’, where just a single individual
has on occasions influenced the behavior of an entire culture or even a country.
So behavior initiating can be a very powerful device at influencing our
behavior, but this process can be both for the good and the bad.
10.8 Behavioral
Based Safety [BBS]
The have been
some attempts over the past ten years or so to redress the imbalance of
psychological behavioral safety versus physical process safety. Once system
that has been trialed in DuPont and others, is called Behavior Based Safety or BBS,
and uses a three step process to improve employee safety behavior.
Step 1 Announced Observation
– employees are notified in advance that their routine behavior will be
monitored, and observers record both good and bad behaviors
Step 2 Corrective Actions – observers recommend corrective
actions to employees to change bad behavior
Step 3 Feedback – observers note the effectiveness of the
corrective actions and periodically repeat the process starting at Step 1
This system
suffers one important drawback, employees act completely different when they
know they are being observed compared to when they are alone, and as stated
earlier, ‘True safety behavior is what happens when no one is watching…’
From this statement we can estimate that if physical process safety is 50% of
total safety, then BBS may estimate this could be 20% to our eventual goal. In
other words, by adding BBS to our safety culture we may achieve only 70% of
total safety, and so this illustrates both the power and weakness of
observation.
But if our final
objective is total safety, how do we achieve the extra 30% to make it 100%?
This is perhaps the most difficult and time consuming process of all, and
relies on permanently changing the mindsets of individuals whether alone or in
the company of a crowd or group, which is further explained in the next section
below.
11. POSITIVE
SAFETY BEHAVIOR
Positive safety
behavior [PSB] is a new concept and although as a process it has been present in
a small way for a long time, it has only recently been recognized as the next
big step in achieving 100% total safety. But firstly we need to define the
basis of PSB.
Everyday most people
expect that nothing bad will happen to them whether in workplace, when
travelling, at play or in the home. This is ‘negative safety behavior’ and is
habit forming, since it assumes no matter what they do, they will always be
safe. This is what we know and immediately recognize as ‘complacency’!
Positive safety
behavior [PSB] is also habit forming, but in a good way, since each person
expects that something bad could happen and continuously scans their
surroundings, looking and listening for hazards and dangers that might affect
them. This is what we know and immediately recognize as ‘paying attention’ or perhaps
having a ‘positive fear’, and is the basis of PSB.
BBS is centered
on observation and feedback, while PSB is based on influencing groups and
individuals to adopt autochthonous behavior, which is the process of driving
and successive copying of good behavior from within the safety culture itself.
But the above
definition is only the beginning, as PSB uses a ‘multi-component approach’ to
achieve total safety, which is effective ‘physical process safety’ and effective
‘psychological behavioral safety’ both in balance. However, PSB should not be
viewed as a program but instead as an indefinite process that permanently
changes our lives.
The
multi-component approach of PSB uses all of the behavior influencing
methodologies as discussed earlier, plus two other processes of (i), ‘penchant
safety’, and (ii), ‘behavioral targeting’, which are described in more detail
later.
Let us examine
two similar processes where one uses PSB and the other does not. When we use
our car each day, we get in the car, put on the seatbelt, start the engine,
look in our mirrors and then drive off without a care. A pilot on the other
hand, visually checks the plane before entering, and then goes through a
complex safety check list ensuring that all systems are functioning correctly,
and then with the assistance of ground control, radar and global positioning, takes
off and maintains a separation distance to other aircraft of thousands of
meters, for the duration of the journey. Yet with all these safeguards, the
pilot still constantly checks the cockpit instruments for any abnormality in
the fear that something could go wrong. PSB is the real reason why the aviation
industry has the best safety record of any transport system and travelling by
car clearly does not. In a competitive world, we could not expect to use all of
the stringent technological safety measures of an aircraft within the average
car, but we can use PSB to modify our behavior and significantly decrease the
number of car accidents, injuries and fatalities.
11.1 Penchant Safety
In any everyday process,
it is usual for physical safety and behavioral safety to be viewed as extra to
the process, while ‘penchant safety’ both the process and safety are viewed as ‘one
and the same thing’. The dictionary definition of the word ‘penchant’ means a
‘liking’ or ‘leaning’, and so ‘penchant safety’ means that safety and the
process are conjoined.
We often use
metal scissors to cut paper, but there always a danger that we might cut our
finger. If we use plastic scissors, we can still effectively cut all the paper
we want and there is no danger of cutting our finger. This is ‘penchant safety’
and is inbuilt within the process. The Volvo car company has been using a form
of penchant safety for decades. Most other car manufacturers in the world
firstly design a component part, and then modify it slightly until it just
passes the safety test. Volvo on the other hand, design in the penchant safety
from the very beginning and then when tested the majority of components far
exceed the safety parameters.
We can use
penchant safety equally in ‘physical process safety’ and ‘psychological
behavioral safety’, as part of our total safety balance. Penchant safety is
extremely powerful and often very easy to implement. Most people within their
busy daily lives often resist using safety features as they are an extra burden
to the task. But with penchant safety, those same people may not even be aware
of its embedded existence in the process and are generally happy to
comply.
So whether we
are designing an oil refinery, fixing a plumbing leak or playing with the kids,
we can all use penchant safety as part of the process. Moreover, adding safety
after the fact often incurs a heavy cost penalty, including it as an embedded
or integral part of the process significantly reduces time and money.
11.2 Behavioral
Targeting
‘Autochthonous behavior’
within safety cultures has it roots from within the culture itself, and grows
and drives throughout the safety culture and is more easily accepted since it
is seen as ‘home-grown’ behavior. By comparison, the opposite is ‘allochthonous
behavior’ and is imported from outside the safety culture, and not so easily
accepted since it not part of the normal everyday life and so is often
resisted. This is also one of the major reasons why new safety directives,
campaigns and initiatives have a poor buy-in within safety cultures, and also
why they often fail after short time period. So the trick or technique to make
an effective change within a safety culture is to mask its origin and so that
the safety culture members believe it is home grown, and this can be achieved
by ‘behavioral targeting’.
To train every
single person in a large group or company to improve their safety behavior
would take a very long time and have a very high cost. So why not use those
same processes that put the bad behavior there in the first place, which were
usually accomplished in a very short time frame and for free. We discussed
earlier crowd psychology and the process of large scale copying, and it is
surprisingly easy to turn this around into copying good behavior instead of
bad. Advertising companies have been using this process for decades, they
convince a few people to buy a product by direct advertising, and then word-of-mouth
and copying do the rest of their work.
So ‘behavioral
targeting’ means to train a small group of selected individuals within a crowd
or group and then monitor the behavioral change, making changes to the training
direction as necessary to suit the larger group, to effect the fastest take-up
of the new behavior. But who are the most appropriate people to train for
behavioral targeting? Generally, it is
those people for one reason or another, can influence others very readily.
The most obvious
people for targeted training within a crowd or group are the following
personality types.
- Natural leaders –
irrespective of rank
- Appointed leaders –
foreman, supervisors and other management
- Popularists – people
who have strong friendly connections with many
- Extraverts – outgoing
people
- Communicators –
people who have strong interpersonal and communications skills
- The old hand –
persons who have been in a group for a long time and command respect
- Rebels – people who
like to circumvent rules
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