Industry Survey Results (cont....). This page reports on the design elements of Behavioral Safety processes and provides insights into typical configurations used in Industry.

In terms of project team composition, Steering Committees which meet on a monthly basis is the most popular form of project team, followed by a single site coordinator who drives the process on 'day-to-day' basis and reports to a project champion (usually a senior manager). Others use 2-4 person project teams. This usually occurs where a large site is divided into smaller areas, with an administrator reposonible for ensuring data collection, etc., in each. A small number of processes have adopted a mix of monthly Steering Committes and single coordinators, thereby achieving the best of both worlds.

Process Champions are usually members of a site's management team, who are there to provide any support required from the project team. Most processes have between 1-10 process champions, with this increasing to over one hundred in a smaller number of processes. The priniciple being demonstrated in these latter projects is 'the larger the number of champions, the greater the degree of managerial commitment to ensuring the process delivers'. Surprisingly, almost a third of processes do not have any project champions, suggesting these are entirely 'employee owned', with managers 'steeping back' and watching from the sidelines.

In terms of workforce involvement, it would appear that only 40% of all processes involve the majority of their workforce in Behavioral Safety. This indicates there are significant areas of opportunity in this area to help companies maximise the benefits of their process. Workforce involvement is one of the most fundamental aspects of Behavioral Safety, as the process helps to ensure safety is done 'with' people, not 'at' them.

Contact Rate refers to the frequency of observations. Research has shown that a 'daily' Contact Rate is much more effective at reducing injury rates, than those process using an 'intermittent' Contact Rate (2-3 times per week), which in turn are more effective than a Contact Rate of once a week, quarter, etc. In other words, the higher the frequency of observation, the bigger the impact. Surprisingly, the least effective 'Contact Rate of once per week, or less' is the most widely used! This may explain the failure of some processes. Just over 40 percent of processes uses the optimum 'daily' Contact rate.

Observation focus refers to 'the observation strategy'. Some proceses use a 'one-on-one' approach where an observer monitors an individual for a short period of time and provides verbal feedback. This strategy requires as many people as possible to be trained as observers. Another strategy is to train an observer, who monitors all his / her colleagues during an observation period, and provides verbal feedback at the point of observation. This strategy reduces the number of observers required at any one time. A typical strategy used for lone-workers is 'self-monitoring', where people monitor their own performance, generating 'self-feedback'. The final common strategy is to monitor outcomes of behavior (i.e unsafe conditions). This is often used in chemical plants where there are few people to observe, so the focus is more on Process Safety issues.

Over half of processes use a 'one-on-one' strategy, which research has shown is the least effective for reducing injury rates, while a quarter of processes focus on workgroups (the most effective). A few use 'self-observations' with lone-workers, while fewer still focus on 'Outcomes' (which is the second most effective strategy).

Overall, in terms of process elements, the results indicate there are significant 'areas' of opportunity' to reduce incident rates further if company's adopt the most effective 'Observation Strategy' and 'Contact Rate' and take steps to increase the amount of 'Employee involvement'