Becoming a Trained Observer

I frequently reference the time where I was responsible for the behavior-based safety process in the manufacturing facility I worked for locally, as well as the support I provided other sites across North America, but I don’t think I’ve ever shared much about my initial exposure to the idea; two days of training to become a behavior-based safety “observer” in addition to my role operating a stamping press. I can’t say that I was very excited about sitting through two full days of training. The part I liked most about my job at that time was that there were very few things that could hinder the results I achieved throughout the day, so I was typically full speed ahead - all the time (at work and in basically everything I did away from work, too). Being confined to a chair in a training room for back-to-back days at that stage of my life was the closest thing I had experienced to torture.

I could go on for days about the opportunities I’ve had since, because I survived those two days and took some of the things I learned then to heart, but the main point I’ll call you attention to here is the importance of being able to recognize individual behaviors without attaching them to beliefs, motives, or intentions. Listening to what someone tells us can provide a tremendous amount of information, but the behaviors they choose on a daily basis - whether those behaviors coincide with or contradict their words - provide us with a complete picture of where someone’s priorities lie, for whatever reason.

A core tenant of the behavior-based safety methodology was to watch a peer perform their job for at least ten minutes to develop a reasonable understanding of how they really do it. When the process was rolled out corporately, one of the major concerns was that folks would simply change their behavior while they were being observed, then revert back to any at-risk behaviors once the observation was complete; and that’s where habits come into play! We were trained to observe for at least ten minutes. Someone could likely avoid the risks they’d normally take for a few repetitions in their routine, but their habits nearly always took over after seven or eight minutes. The final few minutes of observation were nearly always where we’d get a complete picture of what their “normal” approach to any given task was. 

The most valuable part of the behavior-based safety model was the feedback we were trained to provide to the individual we observed immediately after. It was our responsibility to explain the specific things they did to avoid or mitigate hazards and to point out any behaviors that exposed them to potential injury. In many cases, the individual being observed didn’t recognize how close they were to a slip, trip, cut, bump, or bruise. Sometimes though, after asking several of those open-ended questions I mentioned earlier, we were able to discover that the risk was indeed something they were aware of but they felt like this was something they had to do to get the job done; due to time pressure, lack of training to do it another way, or not having a feasible alternative.

For our purposes here, I’ll challenge you to consider a time where you’ve gotten out of bed in the morning and decided that getting stitches was something you need to do that day; your day just wouldn’t be complete otherwise… That’s ridiculous, right? No one would ever wake up with the intention of getting hurt and needing stitches! Regardless, people still choose behaviors every single day that leave them exposed to potentially injuring themselves in a way that requires stitches.

We’ll rarely hear someone say that safety isn’t important to them. Tying this back to the importance of a definite purpose, our team members will seldom tell us that they’re not interested in performing their best or creating a better lifestyle for their family. However, there will be times where their behaviors do not line up with the goals they’ve shared. While we should always be listening to what our team members tell us they value, or what they want to achieve, we’d do well to trust what their behaviors show us. If what they’ve shared is something far different than what their actions could possibly result in, part of our leadership responsibility lies in digging deeper to identify their individual purpose. When we see this type of disconnect, there’s always something behind it - so we’ll pick up there next time.