Unions Go to War with Behavior-Based Safety

While criticism of BBS isn’t new, claims that it subverts the laws are new charges. BBS is a billion dollar annual business in the U.S. and the people who make their living off it are not likely to go gently into that good night. As long as someone can make a buck of some element of BBS, there will be a concerted effort to keep it alive.

Irrespective of how safety professionals feel about labor unions, Workers Uniting does the safety function a great service in its statement, if for nothing more than identifying those practices that it considers most odious within a BBS system. Workers Uniting identifies characteristics of behavioral safety programs that it claims constitutes behavioral safety:

• Prizes and reward schemes tied to no or low injury reports or lost time accidents. Not every safety incentive is tied to no or low injury rates, but those that do are very counterproductive and often lead to under-reporting of injuries. As I have recommended many times, if you MUST have a safety incentive program, provide incentives for suggestions for making the workplace safer or for participation in a safety workshop. No one should ever provide an incentive based on the absence of something.
• Inquiries into and disciplinary action for accidents. Under Just Culture systems (which, for the record, are not BBS systems) accidents are seen as unique opportunities to provide a look into what went wrong. The focus should always on why the system failed. In cases where an injury was caused by human error the focus should always be on why the error led to an injury (for example why was this error not foreseen and why was nothing done to protect the worker from injury in the event of an error?) I have written reams on why discipline won’t work and does nothing to protect workers.
• Observation schemes involving workers reporting co-workers for unsafe behaviours. In this particular place, I don’t think Workers Uniting goes far enough. This statement should not limit the scope to “workers reporting co-workers for unsafe acts” and included observations by supervisors. Behavior observations are expensive wastes of time and do little to protect workers. These activities create the illusion that Operations is doing everything it can to protect workers when in fact it is not.
• The focus shifting away from designing out hazards to whether or not workers are wearing their PPE or “lifting properly. Again, I have been preaching the need for safety professionals to move from being policemen to being process improvement advocates for years. Workers Uniting seems to echo my sentiments with this point. I’m not sure I would agree that the practice of enforcing lift procedures and policing PPE requirements constitute behavioral safety, but I agree the practice is misguided. They can include anything they want.
• Workers being afraid to report injuries, illnesses and accidents. This is more widespread than many people believe, and again, I’m not sure this is limited to BBS programs. While conventional wisdom seems to hold that workers are most likely to fake an injury in the face of impeding lay-offs research has shown that many workers will conceal an injury in these situations because they fear their injury may hasten their dismissal.

Recently, I posted an article that explored the skills tomorrow’s safety professionals should be learning today, and inevitably somebody mentioned that they had ought to be well versed in BBS. Think BBS is going away? Think again.