Achieving world class safety performance requires a comprehensive safety management system, including important components like safety training, pre-shift meetings, near miss reporting, pre-task risk assessments, audits, leader safety interactions, hazard remediation, and stop work authority.
Safety systems help to educate, clarify roles and responsibilities, and address a wide range of safety issues. Importantly, these systems are more proactive and preventative than traditional safety management, and they encourage engagement at all levels. But is it enough?
Organizations often have all the necessary safety tools and processes; the problem is that they don’t use them consistently. Pre-task risk assessments, for example, can only prevent incidents if employees actually do them and do them well.
ADI improves your safety performance by ensuring consistent execution of your safety management system. We analyze your safety management tools and processes from a behavioral perspective, helping you make adjustments that encourage employees to use them reliably. In some cases, we help clients modify their tools to make them more behaviorally sound and user friendly. In many cases, we find that our client’s safety tools are well-designed, but the management systems don’t support using them consistently. At ADI we know that the key to improved safety performance is better behavior management.
With the science of behavior as our guide, ADI works with clients to uncover the root causes of variance in safety systems and then develops evidence-based strategies to ensure consistent application and impact. By helping employees at all levels see the positive outcomes of consistently using safety tools and processes, we ensure clients experience sustained success.
Here are some examples of how our process can improve your impact:
- Tools such as equipment safety checklists and pre-task risk assessments are completed thoughtfully and thoroughly
- Processes such as pre-shift safety meetings result in engaging, meaningful conversations about the work ahead and how best to do that work safely
- Senior leader safety tours lead to positive interactions that leave employees feeling listened to and encouraged
- Peer observation systems encourage meaningful feedback on behaviors that truly impact safety
- Near miss reporting systems provide a truthful picture of risk and lead to organizational learning
Safety systems are all about behavior—they are about identifying all the things that need to be done to make the workplace as safe as possible. Ensuring all those behaviors occur reliably requires a deliberate, systematic process. If you struggle to get the results you expect from your safety management system, ADI’s behavioral approach will help.
Avoid Putting Good Workers In Bad Systems
In Safe by Design: A Behavioral Systems Approach to Human Performance Improvement, authors Judy Agnew and David Uhl explain the science behind how organizational systems influence frontline and management behavior and introduce a framework for improving their impact on safety. Agnew and Uhl examine nine common systems that have unintended effects and provide practical tips for redesigning those systems to improve safety outcomes and strengthen safety culture.