Jordan Hollingsworth, MS, ASP, CHST, CHSP, CRIS®
Safety Advisor, Design and Construction
On many construction sites, there’s an enforcer who is widely disliked. His mission is to spot workers who are violating the site’s safety rules and see to it that they are called out and penalized. This enforcer comes to be known by many names (some of which are unprintable), but most often as the safety “cop.”
In the eyes of the workers on his site, he takes on the characteristics of Barney Fife on Andy Griffith’s timeless TV show. He arrogantly proclaims his authority, puffing out his chest as he steps into a situation, and never notices that those he’s hoping to correct see him as a fool. His heart is in the right place, and his ultimate objectives are sound, but his law-and-order approach makes him ineffective. And sadly, the workers who he sets out to protect are the ones who suffer the most. After all, when they ignore his dictates, they put themselves in hazardous situations.
Even when the enforcers aren’t quite as bumbling as Barney, the “cop” approach of “I’m going to catch you doing bad things, and I’ll punish you for them” is far too prevalent on construction sites. Instead of enhancing worker safety and reducing the cost of incidents, the attitude creates a gap of resentment between the owner and the workers.
Looking to manufacturing success
To find a better approach, we need only look at changes in manufacturing. For years, the world’s most successful manufacturers have learned that the old approach of “I’m the boss, and you’re to do whatever I tell you” failed to benefit anyone. Workers became unmotivated -- even angry -- and the result was poor quality, low productivity, and high turnover.
The situation improved when those manufacturers realized that the key to achieving the performance and level of quality they desired was to help their workers change their behavior. They began to take a different approach with all facets of the manufacturing process -- including safety -- and achieved success. Workers began to take a greater responsibility over all aspects of their jobs.
Despite its success in the manufacturing sector, the concept of behavior-based safety has been slow to migrate to the world of construction. I’ve been fortunate to have worked with a healthcare provider that has long been quick to embrace new ideas, behavior-based safety among them. To illustrate the basic concept and ways that it functions in practice, I’ll draw upon our experiences.
Attitude is the key
One of the basic tenets of behavior-based safety is the awareness that changes in behavior begin with changes in attitude. It’s unreasonable to expect a worker to act differently if he doesn’t have a genuine and personal interest in making that change. If he views safety as one more top-down command that he’s expected to obey “just because,” the best you can hope for is grudging acceptance.
On the other hand, if that worker learns that he exerts a significant amount of control over safety in his workplace, and that the primary beneficiary of that is not his employer or the owner, but himself, he will look at safety in an entirely new way.
That is what we work to achieve throughout our jobsite safety committee. That committee, which includes representatives of each of the trades and/or contractor companies working on the site, has as its primary purpose increasing co-workers’ interest in and awareness of safer work practices. As the safety consultant on the site, I act as the facilitator for that process, and have given the committee the goal of motivating workers to do the right things because they are the right things, not just because that’s what the rules demand.
Marketing safety through multiple channels
In essence, the committee works as a team to “market” safety to their fellow workers. The process involves both educating them about the importance of safety and monitoring their compliance, with an emphasis on recognizing “good” behavior, rather than penalizing “bad” behavior.
They started a “Safety Begins with You” campaign, and have been working with the owner’s public relations and multimedia group to develop materials to support that campaign. One example of that is working with the multimedia team to develop a video that is being used during orientation. It represents one of several different ways through which they are sharing the message and trying to change behavior. Others include posters and banners.
Their activities provide an important reminder for safety professionals and those responsible for managing the safety process. Just as the concept behind Designing for Safety encourages safety professionals to look beyond traditional approaches and ideas, we can tap into others who have expertise that will help us achieve our goals. Instead of operating through separate disciplines, we can look at safety as something that is woven through every process.
Contractors benefit, too
It’s clear that both workers and owners benefit from behavior-based programs, but they’re not the only ones. Contractors gain from employees who have developed a better understanding of the value of safe work practices and a sense of self-determination and personal responsibility. That typically has the long-term effect of reduce claims, as well as some benefits that aren’t as easy to quantify, such as greater job satisfaction and an enhanced appreciation for quality.
Throughout my career, I have observed that there is definitely a correlation between safety and productivity, and the contractors who consistently display the highest productivity will invariably also have the lowest incident rates.
Dealing with turnover
One of the biggest challenges with implementing a behavior-based safety program is the reality of turnover in construction projects. A skilled tradesperson may be on one project for six months, switch to another project for a year, and then move to a third. Each of those sites will have different approaches to safety.
We have an advantage on our current site in that the owner has unusually high standards for contractors. Those standards, which are supported by a comprehensive prequalification program, reduce the pool of available workers. In turn, that reduces turnover among both contractors and tradespeople, creating a conducive environment for long-term efforts such as behavior-based safety.
Even when turnover occurs, the owner has multiple projects underway, so it’s likely that the workers will move on to one of those other projects. Because behavior-based safety has been woven throughout the company, those workers will encounter the identical safety culture.
Behaviors really can change
Perhaps the best way to illustrate the success of this approach is to point to real-world examples. I recall a superintendent for a contractor who didn’t exactly warm up to this behavior-based concept. For the first six months he was on the site, we butted heads over safety issues. Then his own behavior began to change, and he started calling other contractors’ safety-related deficiencies to our attention.
An even better example is the tradesperson who wrapped up his work on our project and moved on to the next. Several months later, he returned to address some punch-list items and pulled me aside to talk about the safety violations he had witnessed on his current project. Although his new site didn’t take a behavior-based approach, he continued to follow the lessons we instilled while he worked with us. He will always be better off for that, and so will every contractor and owner for whom he works.