Safety practitioners have been struggling since the beginning of the movement with how to measure success and how to hold line managers accountable for that success. A number of successes have been recorded. However, what we know about measuring success in safety has rarely been combined with allocation of accident costs and evaluated from a behavioral standpoint.
Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity is, "Doing the same thing and expecting a different result." Our challenge as safety professionals is not to bury our heads by doing what we have always done. Einstein's definition put in the Texas vernacular is, "If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got!" I'd like to introduce you to some techniques that you may be familiar with, but used in a combination of ways that may open your eyes.
During this session we will be taking an organizational accountability survey so we can see where our organizations are now. We will be looking at the basics of behaviorism and the principles involved, traditional accountability measures and how they are used, allocation of accident and injury costs, safety process activity measures, and a behavioral analysis of the various types of accountability systems and the results that they yield.
At the end of the session, you should be able to apply the principles of behaviorism to the accountability measures you are using now and determine if they are giving you the results you really want.
You should also have a tool that you can use to combine behavioral principles, safety process activity measures, and accident/injury costs in your accountability systems.
The Organizational Accountability Survey is an ad hoc instrument for you to get an idea of where your organization is now from the standpoint of holding line management accountable for safety. It includes questions about best practices regarding goal setting and holding people responsible for those goals.
Please fill out the survey. It includes no place for your name or company name, but does have some information regarding your organizational setup and position. I would appreciate getting one copy back to use in further research. I have included two if you would like to duplicate your answers for your consideration as we go through the presentation.
Before we can apply the principles of behavior, we need to agree on exactly what we will be applying. Many of you have a great deal of experience or exposure to behavioral safety and what you see here will be familiar to you. Others may be seeing some of this for the first time. Please be patient as we agree on some common definitions and terms and how they are used.
