“Name, blame, shame, retrain” is an often-used phrase for older ineffective paradigms of safety management and accident analysis. Dr. Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School phased the situation this way: “Accountability is a favorite word to invoke when the lack of it has become so apparent.” Kanter, 2009 The concepts of accountability, culpability and […]
Earlier, I outlined the six (6) stages of a Behavior Modification Intervention. Now, I want to discuss how the same six-step process used to change the behaviors of hourly workers can be used to promote critical health and safety behaviors amongst management personnel. Management behavior will heavily influence the success or failure of a Behavior-Based
Almost all Occupational Safety and Health efforts need one key ingredient to be successful… Employees participating in the safety process! Heck, OSHA and EPA have even regulated employee participation (EP) in their process safety standards. But far too many organizations have not quite understood the concept of Parent-to-Parent engagement vs. Parent-to-Child engagement and almost all
The elements that form the safety culture maturity model have been adapted from the safety culture components listed by the HSE in Reducing error and influencing behavior – HSG48. It is unlikely that these elements will map precisely onto the factors that companies have previously measured in safety culture or climate surveys because there is
When analyzing barriers, investigators should first consider how the hazard and target could come together and what was in place or was required to keep them apart. Obvious physical barriers are those placed directly on the hazard (e.g., a guard on a grinding wheel); those placed between a hazard and target (e.g., a railing on
The core element of behavior modification is the ABC model of behavior: Antecedents Behavior Consequences The ABC model specifies that behavior is triggered by a set of Antecedents (something that precedes behavior and is causally linked to the behavior) and followed by Consequences (outcome of the behavior for the individual) that increase
The main elements of a safety culture and their various interactions are previewed below. Each subcomponent will be discussed more fully below:
Approaches to health and safety vary considerably at all levels of management. As we will see, the Human Factors approach wins hands-down.
The use of risk controls or barriers to protect the people from hazards is a core principle of safety. Barriers are employed to serve two purposes: to prevent the release of hazardous energy and to mitigate harm in the event hazardous energy is released Energy is defined broadly as used here and includes multiple forms,
Safety Management Systems (SMS) was developed to integrate safety as part of an organization’s management of safety performance. The benefits of process-based management systems are a well-established component of quality performance. As organizations and the technologies they employ became more complex and diverse, and the rate of change in the pace of societal expectations, technical
An organizational event-causal story developed by James Reason starts with the organizational factors: Strategic decisions, Generic organizational processes – forecasting, budgeting, allocating resources, planning, scheduling, communicating, managing, auditing, etc. These processes are colored and shaped by the corporate culture, unspoken attitudes, and unwritten rules concerning how the organization carries out its business. [Reason, 1997]
Here is a list of questions investigators may ask to determine whether line management deficiencies affected the accident. These questions are based on the seven (7) guiding principles of an SMS. These are not intended to be exhaustive. Investigator(s) should adapt these questions or develop new ones based on the specific characteristics of the accident.
