BEHAVIOUR AT WORK
“IMAGINE YOU WALK ON TO THE SITE IN YOUR HARD HAT AND SOME OF YOUR COLLEAGUES POINT AND LAUGH. YOU ARE UNLIKELY TO WEAR IT THE FOLLOWING DAY.”
hard hat and told to wear it. Then, you walk on to site and none of your colleagues are wearing theirs and, to make things worse, some of them point and laugh at you for wearing yours. This type of consequence is unlikely to make you wear your hard hat the following day.
Alternatively, imagine the same situation but instead your line manager actively praises you and thanks you for behaving safely. This consequence is far more likely to mean you keep wearing your hard hat. Positive reinforcement of desired behaviours in the form of recognition, praise or other rewards such as prizes, all have the potential to ensure they happen more regularly.
OTHER INFLUENCES There are other factors that influence the impact of consequences on behaviour. These include the timeframe, predictability and significance of the consequence. Consequences that are certain to occur, happen soon after the behaviour and are important to the individual are more likely to sustain desired behaviours than those that are in the distant future, uncertain and less important to the individual.
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Back to our hard hat example: immediate, consistent and personal verbal recognition is soon and certain but may or may not be important to the individual. However, this is still likely to be more impactful than a vague mention in monthly safety meetings that people have been seen wearing their hard hats.
An effective health and safety management system will have a balance between infrastructure (machine guarding, personal protective equipment etc.), systems (policies, procedures, training, monitoring etc.) and people (programmes to improve behaviours). In general terms, the infrastructure and systems form the antecedents we have outlined in this article. But as we have seen, these elements cannot be effective on their own.
There is strong evidence that a significant proportion of accidents are caused by unsafe behaviours and that actions modification techniques can be effective in promoting desired actions, provided they are implemented effectively.
However, as we can see from our example, the consequences of an action can be many and varied and each one of these will have a different
impact on the individual, increasing or decreasing the likelihood that the desired behaviour will occur.
In taking on the challenge of addressing behaviours as part of a health and safety management system, it is important to take the time to find out what the person or people whose behaviour you are seeking to change are likely to find reinforcing.
The better you can understand what is important to them the easier it is to select relevant reinforcements. For example, rather than handing out free lunch tickets for observed safe behaviour, an organisation might choose to put money into a fund which is donated to a charity nominated by the staff at the end of each month.
Organisations implementing behavioural change processes should always stress to leaders the importance of consistent, ongoing reinforcement of desired behaviours. Stopping positive reinforcement once the desired behaviour is observed once or twice will almost certainly result in a change for the worse.
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