Why Do Employers Continue To Focus Their Safety Efforts On “Fixing” Employees?

I was at a business association meeting recently when I sat down at a table with 5 other attendees. I started listening to the conversation in which they were discussing their workers compensation and employee injury challenges.  They were all in agreement that if only their employees would “use common sense” and follow procedures they wouldn’t get hurt.  One remarked that the company he worked for was using behavior based safety to improve safety.  Another person stated they were doing that in combination with incentives to promote safe behaviors and compliance.   The question I had was why they were so convinced that their safety problems were due to their employees instead of defects in their work systems?

I find that employers are convinced that if only employees would behave correctly that all of their issues with OSHA compliance and reducing the numbers on their OSHA 300 logs would go away.  Behavior is the bulls-eye of the target with little to no regard to the work system.  Psychology is the preferred solution using principles of operant conditioning and, safety “awareness” and motivational training.  It seems safety professionals are trying to re-create the Pavlov’s dog effect in their employees.   They assume people are just like dogs that all you have to do is train and give them treats for a little while and they will automatically perform the same way each time—Safety issues solved!  Now imagine trying to convince the plant manager, quality engineer or CFO that the best strategy to improve productivity, reduce waste and increase efficiency would be to use psychology, i.e. behavior-based Lean and behavior-based Six Sigma!  No other business system is managed by behavior centered solutions so why should is safety?  It makes absolutely no sense (financial and yes, psychological) to me.

Are accidents/incidents due to “bad” behavior or is it the result of the work system?  When root cause analysis is performed the actual cause is rarely due to an employee purposely doing the behavior.  It is because the system (environment, circumstances, equipment, policies, etc.) produced the behavior, action or choice that seemed like the right one at the time.

Granted, there are many articles and studies supporting the BBS approach and effectiveness.  However, when one looks closely at the details nearly all of the material is written or provided by BBS proponents or vendors.  In my internet search I could not come up with one that wasn’t, although I will admit I did not do a thorough investigation of many hours searching.  It appears in what I read that the results are significant in the short term but what happens in the long term.  Does behavior really change and “new habits” form or are the improvements short lived as the BBS fad wears off?  When BBS is first introduced there is a lot of hype and promotion that occurs.  Significant amount of time is given to training and money is needed not only for training but for the tracking time/software that is required and incentives/rewards for the desired good behavior.   But is this effective long term?  What happens when the newness, fun and appeal of incentives wears off?

I believe another reason why employers have embraced “fixing” employees is that the responsibility for the issue is borne by the employee and not the company.  It seems that companies believe that safety performance, good or poor, is a personal issue rather than an organizational/work system issue.  When safety incidences happen it is much easier to blame the employees instead of the business system.  They can issue new “get tough” safety policies, have workers undergo more training and if they still “screw up” to fire them.   Evaluating and fixing the business system is not nearly as easy or quick.  My hope is that employers will soon realize and understand that “to err is human, but to forgive is (system) design”.