A few years ago, I was speaking with
the head of the safety and wellness program for a large US manufacturing
firm. The company has factories in several
states. I asked her how she knew her programs
were working. Her responses gave me a practical
insight how leading indicators fit into that process.
Central to her approach, was a sound
theory of behavioural change and a clear logic model of the factors that lead to
injuries.
Occupational injuries and illnesses, near misses, and individual health issues like obesity, diabetes, and hearing loss are usually multi-causal. The physical plant, equipment design, training, and behaviours such as the adherence to safe work procedures, were very important but underlying these are attitudes. She pointed out that behaviours such as violating safe-work procedures had a feedback effect: the more violations of safe-worker procedures that occur and tolerated or ignored, the more they will occur. Before she could change the behaviours that opened employees to injury, she needed a model of what drives behaviour and a way to integrate that into planning and implementation of health, safety and wellness.
From
a planning perspective, the “theory of reasoned action” and its revised version,
the “theory of planned behaviour,” suggest that attitudes and beliefs determine
much of voluntary behaviour. Changing behaviour must rely on changing attitudes
and beliefs. This is
consistent with concepts such as “bounded rationality” and safety
culture. Workers and managers act rationally
and if safety and health are demonstrably important to supervisors and upper
management, that will get translated to the shop
floor.
My US contact described her approach
to eliminating eye injuries in their plants. Her model included many components.
She and her staff looked at design (including guards), considered awareness
sessions, worked to have supervisors insist on and reinforce compliance with
wearing eye protection, as well as consistently modelling the behaviour will
likely contribute to your goal.
Her
final planning step was to decide the inputs, resource, activities, and products
her plan would encounter (and to seek budgetary approval where
required).
Remember, her goal was to eliminate
eye injuries. Counting the number of workers who
suffer eye injuries is a trailing indicator. She developed several possible leading
indicators including the percentage of staff participating in awareness sessions
and observational data on violations detected by her safety
officers. She also made the inspection of guards
and shields routine with a plant manager report on guards filed monthly.
I hope this example helps. Leading indicators are a powerful
prevention tool that may make your prevention program more effective.
