Applying BBS: The Importance of
Employee Participation Throughout
the Line
Dr Triona Tammemagi
Safety Psychologist, ESB
Traditional Safety Approaches
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Many traditional safety approaches:
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focus on reactive strategies to safety
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focus on lagging indicators such as Lost Time Injury (LTI) rates
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focus on accountability
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largely focus on antecedents/ awareness
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tend to be management driven
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Behaviour-Based Safety
• Behaviour-based safety (BBS) is a proactive approach to improving
safety within organizations that utilizes behaviour analysis principles
• BBS aims to increase safe behaviours and decrease at-risk
behaviours in order to reduce injuries in an organisation
• A large component of BBS is goal setting and feedback – goals
direct our action and feedback gives us information on progress to
the goal
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Behaviour-Based Safety
• Behaviour is a function of its consequences
Antecedent
Signs/ Posters
Policies/ Procedures
Training
Experience
Behaviour
Anything
we see a
person say
or do
Consequence
Recognition
Contributing to safety
Meeting goal
Praise from team
• We do what we do because of what happens to us when we do it
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BBS and Participation by All
Lets look at the individual:
 I’m satisfied when something I work on results in improvements that I can see
 This satisfaction is a good consequence to my efforts in safety
 If I have been involved in deciding what we are doing for safety that satisfaction
of achievement will be heightened
 Sustained behaviour change is more likely because of my initial involvement; I
truly ‘own’ my safety
Involvement in choosing
what behaviours we will
change
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New safety behaviours
Satisfaction that I
achieved what I set out
to do
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How are we Applying BBS at ESB?
• The primary focus of any BBS intervention is that employees
participate in the programme from the beginning – those who will be
using and benefitting from the programme should create it
• Specific areas/ behaviours are targeted by employees to improve,
based on information provided by employees
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Case Study – Employee-driven Intervention
• A 2-day behavioural safety training was run at a power station with
approx. 36 employees
• All lines of management and staff took part in the training
• Following initial training the employees at the station chose ‘dynamic
risk assessment’ as an area for improvement
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Case Study
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Intervention:
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Training and implementation meeting:
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2 hour training on strategies and prompts to enhance dynamic risk
assessment, using Notice, Understand, Think Ahead principle, and;
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2 hours to create implementation plan
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Difficulties:
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defining ‘dynamic risk assessment’;
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examining how employees would measure ‘dynamically risk
assessing’
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Case Study
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Implementation group (of approx. 15 people) decided
on a package consisting of:
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Antecedent prompt
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Modification of content of good catch reports
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Feedback
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Antecedent Prompt
• Created by employees
• Employees carry the card with them and refer
to it prior to a job
Prompt
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Good Catch Reporting
• Good Catch: an event or
circumstance that has the potential to
cause an incident or critical incident
but that did not actually occur due to
corrective action and/or timely
intervention
Behaviour
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Example of a Good Catch
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Feedback
• Delivered daily to most day workers in
morning meeting
• Actions taken on every good catch –
by person reporting good catch and
up the chain
• Good catch data and actual good
catches posted monthly for all staff in
visible area
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FEEDBACK
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Week
11
Week
10
Week 9
Week 8
Week 7
Week 6
Week 5
Week 4
Week 3
Week 2
Week 1
Baselin
e
Baselin
e
Baselin
e
Cumulative frequency
Cumulative good catch reporting
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Programme
introduced
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15
10
5
0
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Anecdotal Information
• Much informal discussion about good catch reporting
• Requests for more NUT prompt cards to be printed
• Contractors increased good catch reporting and use of NUT card –
included in site induction
• Employees reported that it is a way of demonstrating their high-level
safety awareness skills
• Also reported it is a way of getting recognition for their vigilance
around safety
• Employees noted that other power stations are talking about them in
a positive way – the results of some good catches have been
important business-wide
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Application of BBS
• Increasing good catch reporting promotes a culture of vigilance –
often talked about in safety but rarely defined or observed
• BBS gets away from typical “awareness training” and combines
training with positive consequences for behavioural improvement
• Targeting specific behaviours provides employees with a specific aim
• A BBS approach focuses on positives (behaviours to improve, not
behaviours to avoid) and maximises on employee participation and
feedback
• The current case study has created employee ‘buy-in’ for a more
structured BBS approach
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Thank you
Questions?
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