CQ Guide: A comprehensive guide to implementing Behavior-Based Safety (BBS)

According to McKinsey, companies in high-risk industries have made significant progress in responding to safety hazards by implementing new technologies. Companies leverage these technologies to find potential hazards in their working environment. Organizations can now continuously improve safety performance and establish a safety culture by removing risky behaviors through risk identification, mitigation, and behavioral observation.

Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) is the systematic approach to reduce incidents and enhance workplace safety by analyzing the consequences of a particular behavior and collecting reliable and valid data on worker behavior. A strong behavior based safety implementation follows Heinrich’s law of safety which states that if the number of minor accidents gets reduced, the number of severe accidents will also be reduced proportionately.

Importance of Behavior-Based Safety

Behavior-based safety is imperative to an organization as it fosters a culture of safety in the workplace by improving workplace safety and avoiding human error by analyzing employee behavior while they work.

With an effective behavior based safety implementation plan, businesses can identify unsafe or destructive behavioral tendencies at the worksites through behavioral analysis and align their behavior with safe work practices through continuous feedback, motivation, and awareness. This comprehensive program can also help conform to EHS best practices while improving the organization’s employee safety.

The ABC Model In Behavior Based Safety

The ABC model in Behavior-Based Safety is a well-established approach to finding ways to implement behavioral changes by analyzing why people act in a certain way. Based on cognitive behavior therapy, the A stands for Antecedent, the B stands for Behavior, and the C stands for Consequence. Antecedent comes before unsafe Behavior, wherein Behavior is anything we can see an individual do or say. The Consequence could be any event that occurs after a specific behavior.

8 Key Principles of Behavior-Based Safety

To create a safety culture in your organization, consider these three factors: inner personality, environmental impact, and behavioral factors. Here are the eight principles of BBS

Manage behaviors with the help of antecedents
Avoid spying or tattling on workers and praise their good work for better results
Gather information to praise good Behavior for avoiding potential issues and risks
Ensure accurate action plans by sharing the observation data and using it to increase adoption by the rest of the company
Conduct effective safety observations and underline positive impacts to enhance favorable behaviors
Ensure a retainable and sustainable safety program through regular training, rewards, incentives, and prizes
Provide a reasonable timeframe for your workers to see a measurable and noticeable change
Determine how best you can understand and analyze the root causes of your workers’ Behavior

Implementation of the BBS Program

A successful BBS program involves leaders observing their employees right from the design stage and providing continuous feedback on the program’s success. During the implementation process of behavioral observation, the leader should consider the following steps –

Prioritize management’s involvement to inculcate a safety culture.
Create a committee to drive the observation initiative and emphasize them the need for observation.
Make a detailed observation list and streamline the feedback process to improve safety standards.
Enable consistent communication with employees and create a feedback-rich environment so that employees can freely voice their views.
Educate workers on different observation skills and safety skills.
Make positive enhancements to build employee morale and participation as part of the safety culture.
Offer rewards and incentives to safe keep the safety standards.

4-Step To Improve BBS Program In Your Organization

Based on safety observations data and information, there are four steps in the BBS improvement process to activities involving the following steps

Description of the Safety Observation: Description of a well-documented safety observation with relevant data and information can make a huge difference to your organization. To document this with specific details, you can involve a stakeholder to add details if needed or templatize it.
Root Cause Analysis Process: To conduct a root cause analysis (RCA), identify the root cause of any safety-related risks, rank them based on their risk level, and plan the next steps. You can use the 5 Why approach if required. Using a cloud-based solution such as ComplianceQuest’s Safety Observations solution can help you to simplify the entire process.
Plan, Assess, And Act: The next step is tracking the number of safety observations captured and how many were acted on. You should think both short-term and long-term while planning the next steps.
Implementation and Follow-up: The final step is to ensure seamless implementation once the CAPA process is in place and follow up on the impact of this action.

CQ Strategies For Behavioral Observation

ComplianceQuest’s Health and Safety Incident Management Solution can help your organization to keep all near misses, safety observations, and incident data in a centralized location to build an enterprise-wide safety culture. The solution facilitates businesses looking to improve employee productivity and morale, reduce compensation costs, enhance brand reputation, and increase regulatory compliance.

ComplianceQuest organized a webinar on "Promoting a positive Safety Culture through BBS and Safety Observations." This webinar focused on BBS aspects, the critical steps of implementing an effective BBS Program, and how your inspection program can help mitigate risk and promote a strong safety culture with digital transformation.