BBS and HOP My Thoughts
Safety Consultant with Sheldon Primus
BBS and HOP My Thoughts
November 9, 2020
In this week's episode, Sheldon goes over the 5 principles of HOP and BBS. He then reveals which he prefers and why.

Keywords: HOP, BBS, Sheldon, Primus, Sheldon Primus, Health and Safety, EHS, Behavioral Based Safety, Human Performance, Human and Organizational Performance, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, US Election, Donald Trump

[00:00:00] :  this'll episode is powered by Safety FM. Welcome to the safety consultant Podcast. I am your host, Sheldon. Promise. And this is the podcast where I teach you the business of being a safety consultant. So this'll is now. And data the recording is November 8th 2020. So I can tell you, we have ah, reported president elect in the U. S. Which would be Joe Biden and Vice President elect Kamila Harris. So congratulations to them. And truly, I am going Thio start like going through the OSHA management of budget their budget that they had projected for 2021 and just going to start going through that again because I believe in the future you're probably gonna see, uh, some changes with OSHA as faras regulation and a few other things. So time for me to get back into that budget and work it out. But today, what I'm gonna go over is actually going to go through my thoughts on human and organization performance versus behavioral based safety. So that's it. Hop versus BBS. So I'm gonna actually give you guys what I think on both sides just kind of go very, very, very brief overview on either side. And then from there I'll just, uh after the overview is just tell you how I feel on either side. So it's just me so low this time, and we will go over my feelings on how versus BBs right after this word from our sponsor. Do you want to be a safety consultant? Listen to Dr J. Allen of Safety FM give his experience after taking the safety consultant blueprint course. I have actually done research on different consultants and looked at different consulting courses and so on. There is a pretty fancy, very expensive consulting course that is out there. I have actually purchased the consulting course was interested in. It has good information. Don't get me wrong, but you have a consulting course that really drives people onto focusing on safety and how to become a safety. Consulting, I will tell you on your particular course, there was better information in that particular regards thin. The other consulting course. There was more of a generalist form, but I figured I felt like I got more information out of yours on your giving people direct half on what to do step by step. But I really think that you have a genuine good product there that can really assess people if they're interested in becoming a safety consultant. Register for the safety consultant blueprint at w w w dot safety consultant blueprint dot com Enter code podcast for a special discount. All right, welcome back. One of the jams that made recently s e get to play it for you guys. Eso That's one of the things I truly love to do in my spare time, whenever that is, is right. So music So this one's my five and song. I love being able to play royalty free music Come on away, Right. So let's get into this. So hop human organization, performance versus behavior based safety I've truly have had so many people ask me about hop versus BBS, especially since I teach for course, uh, the occupational certified occupational safety specialist course, C O S s. So my students that have taken this course that air listening to this podcast kind of know that I feel my way around behavior based safety a lot. And truly I've written a BBS course for ah, very famous company out there, and I believe in it, and I will give you my complete take on both sides. But I do have a little bit more understanding on BBs right now. So let's, uh I'm actually let me reverse that. Uh, I practiced and hop when I was working for the municipality because we have to have a whole bunch of different things in place in my philosophy was I am going to use my workers. I was in the middle management where I had, um, front line supervisors underneath me and then some, like lead operators and everything else for the shift of basically underneath them. And I really believed in my position that if I could harness my workers, they could solve the problem. So that was just my internal beliefs, because I came up the ranks and what I was doing at the time wastewater operating. So I was the youngest operator. I started day one and waste water, not knowing anything. This was 2000. Who? My I think we're not even in the 2000, which was 94. So back in the 90 some of you may not even been born then, but I don't even want to mention that But during that time period, uh, truly that was, uh I started out as being the newbie being the young guy in there and wanted to be able to be heard. So I honestly, honestly believed, as I came up the ranks that that I kept that philosophy of, I believe all levels of the organization has something to say, and I could harness them to get the answers I need. I didn't know I was actually dabbling in human organization performance of the tug eso I said all that just to say, I'm gonna tell you first about BBS, but I actually I didn't know I was ah, hop guy first. So anyway, behavior based safety as it lays out, and a lot of people have have really believed in it. I get a lot of calls to help people with with BBS and then, of course, with teaching it. So I'm going to give you the philosophy behind, uh, my philosophy. Let's put it this way. My philosophy behind BBS. So the concept of behavioral based safety is if you are going to look at human as being what is said in the BBS world to be 85 to 95% of an incident has a human component to it, and you shouldn't place blame on the individual. But it's just recognizing that, uh, if that high percentage is a behavioral factor that came to the tipping a breaking point of wherever the incident was, then it would make sense to observe behaviors and then working backwards to see all right, e. C this behavior that I observed. And now let's get into the mind of the worker to figure out why they did what they did. So that's the pure concept of that. And then around there was built systems, so the systems would be actual observations. Well, first you need to have oh, whatever tool you're using as faras um, the bps worksheet. And it has to be documented behaviors so they talk of behavior is something that you could see. Something that someone's doing as opposed to an attitude, and you wanna documented as safe or at risk at risk means it's gonna give this person and injury or illness safe means all right, a couple of lines, safety and health way of doing this job. So with the safe behaviors that should be the thing that is observed, uh, even rewarded. In some cases, I've seen that. But it's also the thing that you want to focus on as opposed to the at risk behavior, because then the at risk behavior would be truly the outliers on. That's your goal, where it's the oddity, the norm would be theatrics. Chua workers working safe. And that's my interpretation of BBS. So there might be some other people who are thinking of the purest form really likes to say, the earliest form where it is the worker's actions. They're gonna cause this accident. There's more workers that air causing accidents or incidents. If you want to even say that way 85 to 95%. And now I need to manage this individual one individual of the time. I'm gonna monitor them, gonna watch their behavior, and then we're going to tell them, Don't behave this way or coach him through that I don't believe in that side of BBs. If I do coach or telling people about coaching, I want to coach safe behaviors more than I do at risk behaviors, but it's not coaching as and you should do this. It's coaching as in. Why did you do this? Help me understand. Two way street. What was the decision about that? You thought at this time was more prudent for me to do this'll. So is it like, uh, bending at the waist instead of the knees when you're picking up something for manual handling? All right, I have observed some safe behaviors, people bending at the knees and they're lifting, like we we instruct them to. So during the observation, um, noting that as safe behavior observed, I talked to this worker and I say, All right, I noticed that you've done this. Why did you do it? Active listening. I want to make sure that I hear what they're saying. And if there's any thing that they're working around, even though they did the safe behavior, they may have worked around something that the system set him up for, you know? Hey, I had depended the knees. However, I have to go towards my left, then my right, because there's a little wall over here during the place that are are staging area is e can't get over that. So I need to tip a little, but I'm gonna do this thing because I don't wanna hurt my back. I heard about it back once before, and I don't want that happen again. All right, So if that's the case, then truly the workers telling you that they had to figure stuff out even though they're doing it right. So the coaching would be more of active listening and then, you know, asking them some questions. Such as, You know, um uh, was it easier for you to do it this way? Uh, maybe another question could be Have you observed other people doing it? Thea, Other way. Have you said anything or, uh and it's more of an understanding session, if you will. And what can I do? Better? What can the organization to better? So it makes it easier to continue this behavior. Thio, continue what you're doing or if you feel rushed in this moment. And that's another one of the things you really want to find out is in that moment because you're only getting the snapshot. So in that moment, what made you make this decision? Same thing with the at risk behavior in this moment. What made you make this decision? You could even be Man, my knees hurt. My knees have been hurting like you won't believe. And now I gotta bend at the waist because if I bend in the knees, I don't think I'll come back up. All right, That's fair enough. You know, you get older and maybe a little heavier. Who knows? In those cases, you might be like, All right, I'm bending at the waist. I know I shouldn't. But that pain so maybe it could be something like that. And then if you're going to chastise the worker, uh, for at risk behavior during that time you messed up your system, might as well pack it up. It's supposed to be a learning opportunity, not a punitive opportunity. So therefore, it's an amnesty for any punitive actions during those behavioral observations. And if you have a team with you doing the observation, I would also say the frontline supervisor shouldn't care about that guy later on. Say, Hey, man, you missed it up for me. You're so embarrassing. Gun that observation. And here you are doing the wrong thing, things that they told you not to do. Alright, Supervisor just messed up your system in this case. What will happen is it's going to be, um, harder for you to get the trust of the worker. And that's what you need, because the system is supposed to be bottom up, as opposed to top down, where it could be peer coaching from time to time and when it's pure coaching again. It's not peer harping. It's going to be understanding session back and forth. And uh, from there, let's get to the next step because I wanna make sure way go through the cycle. You get your your observations, your notes from your coaching, everything else. You put it into your database and then the database is going to be the first time your baseline. So the first time, Um, let's say do announced visit, so everybody knows that's gonna be You know, you can't baseline that because you'll have what's called the Hawthorne Effect, where people are gonna know that they're being watched and they're gonna act their best. Eso probably your second one with your first one is a reference point. Can be a baseline for you and this is data. So therefore you pick one behavior. You stick with that behavior and you're going to keep working at, I would say monthly, uh is probably the minimum because you need a lot of data points in order for this thing that work on. Therefore, that's why BBS is considered continuous improvement. You can't do it as a one off you can't do it is. So let's do a a check. You know, this quarter or semi annual increment, it has to be consistent so you could get data. The more quality quality data in, the better the system will be. All right. So that's the the idea behind it. And then once you get this data, you analyze it, you go through the feedback from everybody and again, employees. Participation is very important. You find out how to break the barriers that they told you about, and then you go ahead and do this thing over again and do another one, and you're keeping let's say first time at it. You have to safe behaviors out of 10. Then you're gonna make a plan and say, Okay, what can we do to increase this maybe 25% or get three more people with safe behavior when we do this again, and then whatever plan you make, Some people, people may go to the slogan some people may go to reward system. Some people may go to some sort of, uh, training something on. Then when you get done with that, then you keep going until you have what your behavioral mastery is. You know, maybe eight out of 10 is your behavior mastery or maybe 10 out of 10 of, you know, safe behaviors. But there's some medication to get from what you saw initially your baseline and then your reference point. So you always have to keep that data, get that data going in, and it's gonna give you spreadsheets and charts. And, uh, you could even create, in some cases, depending on what you're observing, uh, different clusters of where you have at risk behaviors or even safe behaviors. And then even departments, you know, maintenance has been doing more safe behaviors and operations or something similar to that. And then reward reward the good stuff that makes everybody feel good on its continuous. You can't get out of your safety management system. You can't get stopped. Doing your J. S A is because we're doing BBs. It's actually works together, you gotta keep it on. So that's the BBS side. So let's talk about the human and organization performance. It's really coming from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission there, Uh, the nuclear side always dealt with human performance. And Thea mindset is it. The humans are there, and they are trusted, valuable people. However, we know that there's certain things that they could gravitate to, and they call them performance traps, right? So if there's a few things that they could gravitate to, then maybe we should make it up where we could, um, way could monitor that and make a ah participative, uh, part where you feel safe enough to tell us its management. And we value that we seek for that. Remember, uh, in, uh, Todd Compliments book. One of the things that he always says is, You know, learning has to be something that you do continuously and is a deliberate means, which is actually a principal. So that's one of those things and actually looks Let's do the principles. Uh, let's do the principles as related. Thio the book from Todd Conklin, which was, I guess, five principles of hop, right? It's easy. This s o his version of it was number one. Error is normal, meaning everyone is supposed. Everyone's coming to work. They're doing their jobs, are doing great work. When there is an incident, it's probably a one off or something. That's not the norm. So therefore, you're not going to start blaming the worker because it's not usual. It's the usual work and operation. Everything's functioning well, and that brings us into the principle to where blame doesn't fix anything. So therefore you could blame what you want, but what's that gonna fix? S O Z kind of like what I mentioned with with BBS. You really don't wanna if it works Well, you don't wanna blame the worker for the behavior you just observed. You wanna understand in a thoughtful, caring, empathetic manner. So the principle to where blame fixes nothing is absolutely right, because truly, um, people get defensive, they're gonna clam up, they're gonna feel attacked, and you're not gonna get anywhere. There's no learning involved in that. And that actually brings us to three. Learning is deliberate. Something you got to do. It's a learning experience everyday engaging every level of organization toe, learn what they do, how they do in good times and bad times. And in different times, it's all about figuring out process how human interfaces with the process, everything that goes top the bottom on, uh, the organization, how could we could do better What you're feeling about here if there's an incident, What were you thinking at the time? You're doing this? Try to get some context into everything. And, um, that's the next principle, which is? Context influences behavior. So I do incident investigations, and I'm actually doing one, uh, for a workshop November 17th to the 19th. And I go through both BBS and hump. And I do think about context as being, And this is actually one of the things that the human performance model was is, uh why did this person do what they did on basically, why did, uh why did they do it? What did they do? And for what reason did they do this and its all time sensitive. So you have to focus in on it, right? You know, right at that moment, it's kind of like, uh, with the A B CS. Ever heard of that one? All right, let me wait for your response. Did you hear about a BCS thistles? Back to behavior. I'm sorry. Messing up the five principles. I think I was on four with context and behavior. Uh, there's, ah, principle that there that is the ABC model of behavior behaviors. To be in the ABC is the antecedent. Meaning there was some thought in the workers mind directly before the behavior, the closest to the behavior on and the thought behind that worker at that time it would be the antecedent and then the consequence after, uh, mostly the effective and timely consequence, the meaningful consequence will determine again if this person is going to do this behavior one more time. So the ABC on that model would say, um, workers supposed to wear your seatbelt when he gets on the forklift. And he knows that no one does that. He could see all these other operators on therefore, Cliff. Not one of them are wearing the seatbelt. So in his mind, he's thinking E one really cares about this thing. It's not serious. So he's gonna go ahead and get on that forklift, not put on the seatbelt, get his work done. No one catches him. There's no nothing. That was a positive consequence to an at risk behavior. And it's gonna keep getting repeated to the point where I've been working here for five years, 10 years, 15 years, and I've never had an issue for not putting on my seat belt. So those air some of those things that you're gonna get in green And then there's also the the theory of everybody's action starts with trigger thought behavior. So there's a trigger Theun. There's a thought and his behavior. So maybe Theo Trigger Waas. Um, I got to get this thing done. It's four o'clock would be the trigger time factor, which is also one of the things they call about the human human performance snares, um, the time constraint looking at the clock. Hey, it's like a just before break time, So I'm gonna go ahead and get this thing done real quick, and it's going to set up my afternoon after break and lickety split. I'll be out here a four o'clock when I'm supposed to, without being working late. So, Theo, trigger toe looking at the clock and then processing the time led to the thought Uh huh. I could do this real quick and then after that thought the actual action. So those air some of the process behind human behavior in those ways. And there's a few other theories. You know, I'm not a behavioral risk. I'm not a psychologist in any way, but those are some of the theories that would go behind that. So let me, uh, let me let me finish up the five principles of hop before I go anywhere else. Eso the five principles way talked about one era is normal to blame, fixes nothing. Three learning is deliberate. And you gotta, you know, truly, truly go at it each time. Um, context is context, influences behavior and then leaders how they respond to failure matters. So this kind of goes back to when I was a leader and I was telling you guys had people above me. So I had, like, upper management above me and the executive director and aboard eso there above me, I was in the middle and then behind below me, I had to levels of supervision. So when I first got started, people were used to the old person in my position, and that meant they were going to cover up everything that they could, so they didn't get in trouble. And in some cases they would, you know, point to finger. You know who did it? Everything. Everyone's pointing to the rest of them. So what I had to do is break that and I am. One of the first things I decided to do was to be transparent about me about the organization and the way I was transparent about myself in the organization is without fail every month. I did. Ah, meeting with every shift was a 24 hour shift. So I met with every shift every month, and we talked about not only the organization as we are now, where we want to be in the future, what's coming up from people ahead of me, meaning my executive director and board members. And then also I took an opportunity to listen to them and say, Hey, what's going on? How can I help you? Uh, what can I reinforce? Uh, do you need me to go to upper management in any way and give you some some support or whatever? So I decided to be completely transparent to them, and then also, whenever there was people coming over my over my front line supervisors heads or anything to blame or whatever. Get the Boston trouble for something. Yeah, alright, time out. Grab the supervisor unique. Together. Let's all get in this group and let's talk this thing out. And I had to referee certain things. And truly I wanted to make sure that I was e was thinking about worker as if they are. They're not here to lie to me. They have a grievance that needs to be met. Same thing with the supervisor in a different tone. Supervisor wants to get the chomp done. So did I do something that made them feel like they had to be overbearing? Or did I do something that, you know, affected the way their relationship was together? So I valued that, and I wanted the workers to come to me, wanted management and, uh, frontline supervisor to come to me, and I acted appropriately accordingly. I didn't always give him a quick answer. Right then Sometimes it takes some time. E really had to dig and investigate. And I told them that, you know Hey, I'll give me some time. Let me work this thing out and find out what I can. And then I followed up, gave everybody some sort of process update throughout it. So they felt more comfortable coming to me. And I tried to be a leader. And today I still have people calling me from my old days with the old company used to work for for the government. So I think it worked well. So I believe that 50 principle of hop, how leaders respond to failures matter if you just punish people for coming to you because they find a fault or you want to support your supervisors in such a way that you don't really listen to the workers, they're gonna hide stuff from you. That's not good. It's gonna end up affecting the organization as a whole. So that's one of the things that I truly, truly, truly try to avoid. So in saying that now you actually know my stands on how vs b p s e didn't know. Well, here it is, E Remember Anna Sam Goodman show the hop nerd e said to him I was like I'm 60 40 60 40? Yeah, about 60 40 BBs or BBS Hop depends on the situation. I do think that there is some circumstances where there's a behavior that's happening that needs to change, and I will work with the team to to figure it out. There's some, uh, I had to go beyond safety in my position, so I had to think of operational needs. But then I focused completely into safety. When I was safety consultant, only some of those operational things still stuck with me. The principles of leading still stuck with me. So I know there's some actions. Such as I remember one guy was sleeping on the night shift midnight shift and he led a tank. Ah, process. Tank overflow Alarms were going up left and right, but he was completely knocked out for a good two hours. And there was just ruts in the road from flow going from one side to the next, and it was complete negligence. You can't let that stuff go. You just can't s Oh, there's a trickle down effect that goes with actions, and I believe that holding people accountable for things like that is necessary. How you hold them accountable will always be assigned to the rest of the organization. Is it done fairly? Is it done timely? Is it done? Uh, evenly. Kind of like a like a Gregor's hot stove theory, if you haven't heard of that one. So McGregor was, Ah, theorist and he Douglas McGregor. He's one who also did the X Y theories of personalities to dominance type. So in McGregor's theory, he believed, especially with, um with the hot stove one. Uh, the hot stove theory was this. You put your hand on the hot stove and the hot stove is kind of burn you. Regardless, it's gonna burn you if you touch it one time two times three times it's going to bring you the same. Uh, no matter who you are, you could be the owner of the house and you touch a hot stove, you're gonna get burned. Uh, if you're going to, uh, basically, there's a warning to because it's glowing nice and red. So you get warmed in your head. You see that red, You know, because of past experience, that you touch this, you're gonna get yourself burned. So I also believe in that in that theory, that hot stove theory. So, in my my safety and health belief, now the way that I consult now, the way that I tell my clients now always goes back to when I was a manager and goes back. And I think of how I felt each level of those ranks as I became where I ended up as a middle of a manager. So that is why I'm both okay. And of course, I'm gonna teach on November 17th through the 19th. You could go toe Sheldon prima's dot com backslash events with an S Sheldon prima's dot com backslash events with an s, and then you'll be able Thio sign up for that incident. Investigation Course I'm going to go through hop BBS, and we're gonna go through, uh, incident, how they happen, how to dissected. We're going to go through all the different models of incident causation all the way back to you know, the three phase and the domino theories and everything else on. Then, from there, we'll even talk about Swiss cheese with James Reasons theory and even Heinrich h. W. Hinrichs. He's got a place in there, so I'm gonna give you more of the history. Um, and my mindset is I'm gonna give you the background. We're gonna process this stuff in a workout in, um in workshops. And then after that, we're gonna also finish up with how do you do the paperwork? How do you do the re mediation? How do you present what your findings are so that you can actually, you know, leave this thing and you know that you'll be better. It's gonna be one of those losses that will be where there's a pure loss and the speculative loss. So speculative loss is Yeah, the thing is terrible. But it wasn't catastrophic. So that's one of the things will go through. So get a chance. Go to that page, Sheldon. Primacy. Com Backslash events on and go get him. This'll episode has been powered by 60 FM.