• General Safety

  Human behavior, changing behavior is not easy as you think

  Posted by Nigel on 11 June 2020 at 5:56 am

  Human behavior is exceedingly complex. In fact, everything we do is the result of a complex series of decisions based on things that motivate us to act (antecedents), and the outcomes that reinforce how we’ll behave in the future when faced with similar circumstances (consequences).

  Many companies abandon behavioral based safety programs out of frustration that their investment hasn’t yielded the results they expected. They feel they were sold a vision that changing behavior is easy, when it’s not!

  Companies seeking to change behavior focus on the behavior itself without first discovering the root causes that surround it. Instead, they incorrectly focus on trying to force people to change, without first attempting to understand what’s causing the workforce to act that way in the first place.

  Behavioral based safety programs fail because organizations fail to realize that changing behavior requires an understanding of what makes people choose to do what they do. What is it that exists in our environment that influences why we choose to act in certain ways? Too often, the focus of behavioral safety is too superficial. We spend too much time trying to force people to change behavior, when they either don’t see a need to, simply don’t want to, or are unable to, the behavior is often driven because of the way they know the work needs to be done.

  Companies in response impose more rules and penalties on the workforce to force them to change, without attempting to find the root causes what could be guiding that behavior, or even whether they have the capacity to change. The workforce ends up resenting their managers and leaders for the forced changes and any behavior changes are usually only temporary.

  Companies fail to remember that humans don’t react in a positive way to constant reminders of what we’re failing at and as a consequence the overall performance suffers.

  When dealing with behavior change, it’s crucial that companies take a wider look at the entire context that surrounds the workers, and not just the observed behavior in isolation, or the programs they try to introduce will end in failure.

  

  Nigel replied 3 years, 11 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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