Behavioural safety training

We run Behavioural Safety for projects, initiatives and/or on-going processes. (Based on Tim’s best-selling book ‘A Definitive Guide to Behavioural Safety’ and the recently re-launched IOSH CPD course). Processes are tailored to suit each client and will incorporate many of the elements detailed in other places on this site.

We suggest that if only one element is selected it should be the setting up of a workforce behavioural root cause analysis team. This project team is trained in ABC analysis, Just Culture, Reason’s Cheese model and the safety hierarchy and how to use an impact matrixes.

These teams always deliver high impact low cost solutions that prove and excellent a springboard for any other workforce based approach.

“New-Wave” BBS – Mistaken Thinking and Setting Mind-Sets

In the USA the self-styled ‘new’ wave of BBS is focussing on mistakes of thought. Books like ‘You Are Not So Smart”’ and ‘Why We Make Mistakes’ cover these areas in detail and in Tim’s own books he highlights which of these well-known error traps are most applicable to safety. (Starting with the ‘fundamental attribution error’ (FAE) which shows that we all tend to give too much weight to the person and not enough to the environment – especially when something has gone wrong. This has obvious direct links to an empowering and trust building Just Culture concept).

The trick here is to not simply describe the typical mistake – see critiques of classic HF training – but to strive to also ensure in a practical, holistic and systemic way, that the likelihood of the mistake occurring is minimised. (Ask us about the hugely effective ‘Elvis on a bike’ initiative which takes the FAE head on).

Although safety ‘differently’ isn’t really all that different it does stress the importance of assuming (as James Reason’s rules of error management) that error is inevitable, nearly always unintentional but clusters for underlying reasons. Getting into the habit of pro-actively asking ‘what goes right?’, ‘what’s key to that?’ (so we can build in leeway) or just ‘what do you need to do this job well and safely?’ helps minimise the amount of simplistic and erroneous thinking within an organisation.