Part 2:
What is - and is not - ‘engagement’?
There has been a historical division between those who decide what needs to be done, and those who do the work.
The land owner says plant corn on Monday, the farm workers plant corn on Monday; Mr Ford says assemble this part of the motor car, workers assemble the parts of the motor car assigned to them.
So, having determined that to stay safe workers should lift carefully, wear goggles and hard hats, and wait until the power is off before removing a guard, why don’t they just do it?
Many consultancies take this attitude in selling Behaviour Based Safety (BBS) programmes to make workplaces safer.
“One way to improve safety performance is to introduce a behavioural safety process that identifies and reinforces safe behaviour and reduces unsafe behaviour.”
“80 of every 100 accidents that happen in the workplace are ultimately the fault of the person involved in the incident... Workers are not taking the proper precautionary measures before working, or they are simply too lazy to be bothered with it.”
“Over 80% of injuries at work are a direct result of decisions made by people, which is why we really need to understand why people behave the way they do!”
The Behavioural Based Safety approach assumes that “organisations” are getting it right, so all we need to do now is “fix” worker behaviour. Reinforce workers if they wear goggles and hard hats and punish them if they cut corners.
This is rather like setting a rat in a maze. If the rat heads to the left, it will get an electric shock; if it heads to the right, it will get a lump of cheese. It learns to head to the right;
“Managers and designers, it seems, are either not human or do not make errors.”
Professor Trevor Kletz
There are many problems with this way of treating workers. First, it assumes that the employer is already doing enough – that “most organisations do the physical and systems parts of safety well.”
Even if you had it right a few years ago, workplaces change.
Are our systems adapting quickly enough to new ways of working?
Can any of us, hand on heart, say there is no room to improve our systems?
The second problem is that BBS ignores the fact that...
...people are not rats.
