Challenging Health & Safety Behaviour

BY James Wilkins

30th June 2010

Whatever the industry, failing to engage employees in health and safety messages can lead to much more than just trips and falls. Organisations that are too focussed on the What and Why, forget that the most important part of a health and safety plan is the How. Up there with ‘what needs to change?’ and ‘why does it need to?’ should be ‘how do we get employee buy in?’

To make real, lasting improvements employers need to invest in changing employee behaviour by creating a safe and healthy work place culture. Health and safety leaders should ensure managers are aligned in their expectations of what the new behaviours will look like.

By going ‘underground’ in an organisation to hear how employees talk about the risks they encounter and the actual accidents that have happened; to find out whether the stories were told with shock, resignation, humour or warning, we can gather deep determined research into the existing culture of an organisation. The motivations for behaviour must also be experienced by walking a mile in employees’ shoes. This helps those setting the new health and safety rules to understand how realistic they are.

When existing behaviours, norms and attitudes have been determined, health and safety leaders can then start to consider how to change them. Simply setting out and enforcing the new expectations may work with a handful of people - particularly new recruits - but changing the deeply-rooted and well-established behaviours of long serving members of staff can be a difficult and unenviable situation.

By approaching this from a different perspective – one that is underpinned by an understanding of how and why people carry out certain behaviours and how these become part of the culture of the organisation, employees can be seamlessly guided towards new, safer behaviours and an improved culture.

This is because the most successful and sustainable behaviour change occurs when the desired behaviours are ones that require little or no outlay of time or effort, initially and in the long term. Subtle nudges that help employees make better choices change their behaviour without them even realising that they’re doing so, because the new action becomes the most direct and easy way to behave.

Of course, these nudges need to be delivered in communications that make employees sit up, take notice and want to take part. Churning out the same tired old posters and videos push the messages at the audience, only resulting in switching them off.

To really grab and keep the audience’s attention and effortlessly change behaviour, each phase of the plan must consist of engaging communications, which deliver strong messages through the pull method of communication. Only by taking account of how an audience choose to be communicated to in their own lives – what they like to read, see and hear – and then aligning communications to this, can buy-in be achieved.

LOGISTIK GROUP: Sweet caffeinated joy - http://youtu.be/M0D3jKLz6sA. Our Brenda (the vendor) may need a little update hint hint.... ;-)

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Challenging Health & Safety Behaviour