BEHAVIOUR AT WORK
AS EASY AS ABC?
James Clayton, independent consultant and founder of
EHSRated.com, explains the psychology that underpins behavioural changes in the workplace.
‘Sustainable safety’ is a phrase often used to describe the ultimate goal for many organisations in relation to health and safety management. Put simply, it means that health and safety looks after itself or becomes ‘how we do things around here’.
On their own, good systems do not ensure successful health and safety management, as the level of success is determined by how organisations ‘live’ their systems. Behaviour turns systems and procedures into reality. Here, we look at one key theory underpinning many strategies designed to promote desired behaviours and achieve ‘sustainable safety’.
THE THEORY A popular behaviour modification model used by many psychologists is called the ‘ABC’ model. ‘A’ stands for antecedent, ‘B’ for behaviour and ‘C’ for consequence. The theory is that for every action there has to be antecedents (things which have to be in place before the behaviour can happen) and consequences (which affect whether the behaviour will be repeated).
For example: (see table 1) Antecedent
A friend calls and asks if you’d like to meet for a drink
A friend calls and asks if you’d like to meet for a drink
*Table 1
www.tomorrowshs.com
Go out for a drink
Go to your friend’s house for a drink
Behaviour Consequence
Stay out late and feel tired the following day
Return home at a sensible time and get a good sleep
The example illustrates a couple of issues. In both cases the behaviour would not have occurred if the friend hadn’t called and in each case the consequence was different. Next time your friend calls you might choose to go to their house for a drink if you have work the following day!
Now let’s apply the model to a health and safety situation. Imagine you are a safety manager on a construction site and you want to implement a site-wide policy of using hard hats (see table 2).
We can see that a number of things have to occur before people will wear hard hats (the antecedents) and that for different behaviours there are a number of different, and potentially conflicting, consequences. Some of these consequences may increase the likelihood that the behaviour keeps occurring, some may decrease the likelihood. It’s complex, so let’s look at the importance of the two different components.
Antecedents
Hard hats supplied by the organisation
Training provided on the requirement for hard hat use and how to wear them
Signs in place demanding the use of hard hats
Some staff are not wearing the hard hats
*Table 2 49
More staff not wearing hard hats
Wearing hard hats Behaviours ANTECEDENTS
TRIGGER BEHAVIOUR Organisations with a sound health and safety management system will typically have many of the necessary antecedents in place that are necessary for the behaviours to occur (policies, procedures, training, guarding on machinery etc.) However, the mistake many organisations make is to assume that these alone are sufficient. The ABC model shows us that while antecedents must be in place for desired behaviours to occur, they alone are not sufficient to ensure that behaviours are repeated consistently. For this we have to look at the consequences.
CONSEQUENCES
DRIVE BEHAVIOUR Different consequences will drive different behaviours. Let’s look again at our hard hat example. Imagine you’re a new employee and at your induction you’ve been issued with your
Consequences Praised by your line manager Mocked by your colleagues
Discomfort from wearing the hard hat
Head not so hot
Easier moving around in tight spaces No mocking by colleagues No praise from your line manager
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