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Building Teamwork with Behavior-Based Safety

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Jerry Westbrook
03/15/2010

Some contractors have the idea that safety and construction just don’t go hand-in-hand. In the building trade, workers may be on the job one day, and off the next. Since a crew may continually change its personnel, what’s the point of investing in safety training? One might as well just tell everyone to work safely and hope for the best. “Contractors get frustrated because they don’t think they can really control their environment with guys that are coming and going. Some of the contractors will ask, ‘Well why do I want to train somebody to get better in safety when I’m only going to have him for three days and then he’s going to go and work for someone else?’” says Randy Meehan, a safety consultant specializing in workers compensation strategy.

 

“Big Dog” Jerry Westbrook, a safety facilitator, with a construction company based in Las Vegas, Nevada, understands those frustrations because he’s experienced them. He’s also experienced just about every form of safety initiative in his many years in the business. “They’d buy jackets; they’d buy T-shirts but once you gave them out, that’s it; it’s over; it’s done. We had people out there looking around but you’ve got to get your management involved,” he says. Westbrook refers to an ill-fated Las Vegas project where accidents and injuries were treated by first responders from nearby hotels. The builder was asked to invest in a system-wide safety initiative or at least an onsite nurse. “We ended up with neither,” says Westbrook. Eventually, several deaths occurred during the project. Westbrook believes the tragedies could have been prevented, because he remembers another starkly contrasting project that achieved a great safety record, the differing element being a behavior-based safety process.

 

That project involved about 1000 workers toiling in the desert sun in a location 45 miles north of the city. There they would build a massive generating plant, but they also built a new outlook on safety: the workers (including many subcontractors) learned that individuals could take charge of their own safety. But it didn’t start out that way. Westbrook describes the beginnings of the project. “People were out there telling them not to do this and that. It’s kind of like the attitude of catching the kid with his hand in the cookie jar,” he explains. This negative approach didn’t seem to be helping.  “Our incident rate there at the beginning was pretty high,” says Westbrook. “I mean we were at or even a little above the national average which people want to get below.”

 

After researching several safety processes, the group selected a behavior-based system that, along with positive recognition and reward, required a key element—positive and proactive management involvement. As foremen and supervisors began looking for and recognizing positive safe behaviors, the culture shifted from one of “me versus them” to that of “us.” The icebreaker came in the form of scratch-off cards that rewarded small prizes. However, the more important factor was that handing out the card gave supervisors an opportunity to say something positive to the recipient who earned it. “We stressed that when you hand them that ticket, don’t just hand it to them and walk off. Shake their hand. Tell them thank you for the good job. You could see the change in their facial expression and that they felt warm about getting that and about your comments,” says Westbrook.

 

The process also included earned points for participation in the safety process which included learning about and applying specific safe behaviors. These points could be traded in for items chosen by each person, instead of a logo item that was distributed to the masses. The workers often received a scratch-off in their paychecks when they reached a group goal for behavioral safety observations, for example, and the process also included an opportunity for individuals to win vacation trips. “We gave away five a month!” says Westbrook. All of the data was collected and accessed online which made the data easy to track.

 

The management attention resulted in a new focus on staying safe, reminding everyone that a low incident rate is only a goal because it reflects the well-being of the workforce. “Without some kind of positive out there, you’re like the police driving through the neighborhood,” Westbrook comments. “When you catch them doing something wrong you either scold them verbally or write them a warning or do some type of disciplinary action and that’s what they began to see you as, rather than somebody who is out there trying to help them go home safe every day.” The behavioral safety implementation altered that worker perception of management along with the number that reflected a safe site. “It changed the whole perspective. We went from around the national average or even a little over to an incident rate of 0.98 which is way down there,” Westbrook states.

 

“I would say on that project based on that low incident rate, they would be considered in the top 1 percent of those types of businesses that are controlling losses. That means there is profitability to their insurance company which would in turn drive down the insurance premium. That tells them they had great productivity because they didn’t have guys off work or have to bring in more guys to replace them. That is just an outstanding result,” comments Meehan. “They realized insurance savings, productivity, quality—those things that are not as easily measurable as incident rate.”

 

Importantly, management addressed the problem of injury hiding early on by explaining to the crews that incident and injury reporting was a crucial part of analyzing and rectifying risks. To emphasize this commitment, they rewarded workers for reporting even minor injuries or near misses. In fact, negative consequences were put in place for failing to report such occurrences. To management’s surprise, no one tried to play the system, as now everyone was genuinely invested in the safety process. One employee on the project even took the time to call in and comment that in her 30 years of working as a construction worker in Vegas, all the other contractors did was give her a T-shirt, a ball cap, and a slap on the back. But this company was different. In fact, she asserted that she had never experienced a safety program like this before or since. “We are so grateful for it,” she commented. “We are not going to let our coworkers take advantage of a contractor like this because we appreciate what they’re doing for us. They’re serious about it and I think the message that gets out is that this is a contractor who cares.”

 

The key element to success, according to Westbrook, was management involvement. “The superintendents are driving these folks because the bottom line is, ‘Let’s get the project done,’ and most management wants to get it done on time and low budget because that’s their profitability. So you’ve got to get those superintendents and your management team on board with positive reinforcement too, not just the safety guys,” he advises.

 

When companies aren’t sending people to the doctor, they are saving on both real costs and the toll that human suffering takes, but is the extra time and effort worth it? “It takes a little footwork in the beginning but after that it’s like a well-oiled machine,” Westbrook says.

 

Remembering the project that suffered losses, Westbrook points out the different culture that existed there and notes again the importance of involving everyone in such a safety initiative. “We were trying to get the same process there, because I knew how it worked for us. But we see what I call the ‘old cowboy mentality.’ They’ve been doing this for so many years and it’s worked. I’ve had construction workers tell me that. And my reply to them is there’s always that one time. And this big project proved, you may not get to come back from that one time.”

 

Westbrook knows that the managers of that project believed a paycheck was incentive enough for safety. “We as safety professionals need to change that whole aspect. That’s why I cannot express enough that field management has to buy into this program,” he says, and then adds, “When these guys come to the end of their work day or work week, they want some type of recognition other than just the paycheck. It’s a human factor. We all want to be told that we’re good.”


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