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Copyright © 2013 E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. All rights reserved. The DuPont Oval Logo, DuPont™ and The miracles of science™ are registered trademarks or trademarks of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company or its affiliates.

Why Don’t People Just Follow the Rules?

TFZ Offshore Safety Conference

Esbjerg, Denmark April 15 2015

1

Dr Rod Gutierrez Global Leader Culture and Change Management DuPont Sustainable Solutions

2 DuPont Integrated Leadership Approach for Operations Managers, November 2010

Copyright © 2010 DuPont. All rights reserved. The DuPont Oval Logo, DuPont™, and The miracles of science™ are registered trademarks or trademarks of DuPont or its affiliates.

Agenda

About Behaviour Based Safety

The role of cognition (does behaviour drive your thinking or

does thinking drive your behaviour)

Behaving safely or unsafely is not always a decision we are aware of

Workplaces as social institutions (the social context)

Safety improvement as a change process

Integrated whole

Going beyond Zero



So why don’t people follow the rules?

A simple question right?

Wrong!



About behaviour based safety (BBS)

High incidence of injuries and incidents has been the major driver for the

improvement of safety management systems.

BBS: the mainstay over last 25 years.

First BBS program published in 1978 by Komaki, Barwick & Scott.

They demonstrated that applied behavioural analysis methods could be effectively

applied to safety improvement.

BBS has become a non-specific term used to denote any number of

workplace interventions that use observation and feedback.

A behaviour change occurs through a gradual shaping process.

The mechanism of change is conditioning through administration of

consequences over time.

Your behaviour drives your thinking!



Positive Reinforcement:

behaviour more likely to occur when

paired with a positive consequence

Negative Reinforcement:

behaviour more likely to occur

to remove negative consequences

Punishment:

behaviour less likely to occur

to avoid negative

consequences

Positive reinforcement leads to the

highest rates of learning over time

Reinforcement is the key



Limitations of BBS

BBS programs drive behaviour change (uptake of safe

behaviour) through an externalised mechanism - fear of

consequence.

BBS largely bypasses both personal choice and cognitive

processing.

The results of most BBS programs will eventually plateau due

to the inherent nature of the behavioural change process: • Extinction: decreasing the likelihood of behavior occurring by the absence (or

diminution) of reinforcement.

• Habituation: decrease in psychological behavioural response after iterative

exposure to stimulus.



Traditional Approach Vs Positive Psychology

Prevention of Injuries

Injuries

Disease

Incidents

Hazards

0 Promotion of Wellbeing

Health

Optimum

performance

Fulfilment

Happiness

ZERO is only the

beginning and has

always been

+ -



Cultural maturity curve…It is a journey.

The Cultural Bridge

Crossing the cultural bridge

Who crosses first ? How many times? By invitation



Safe or unsafe: do we always decide?

Depends on how our brains interpret incoming information

from the external world.

Our level of awareness plays a huge part.

Attention is limited



Neural networks and attention

Control over focus and attention is so important that the

brain has a whole neural network devoted to it: the

Reticular Activating System (RAS).

Complex pattern of neurons forming a connection between sensory modalities (vision, hearing, touch etc.) and arousal, emotional motivational and thinking centres of the brain.

Controls habituation system

Controls arousal (sleep/awake cycle)

Filters information according to 3 main questions:

1. Is it novel?

2. Is it important to me?

3. Does it fit a pattern I’m familiar with?

Colour exercise

New car



Habituation

Decrease in psychological and or behavioural response after

repetitive exposure to stimulus.

Fundamental adaptive mechanism to assist the brain deal with large

amounts of “irrelevant” information.

We take in 11 million bits of information per second, but the brain

can only process 40-60 bits per second.

Noise

Light

Clothes

Safety signs!



The social side of safety (The social context)

Workplaces are human institutions with their own set of

informal, unwritten social norms which operate in parallel

to formal rules. How do you behave in a lift with other people?

Do you communicate with your friends the same way you speak to your boss?

• How do you know what is appropriate?



Understanding the kinds of social norms that

regulate safety behaviour in your organisation

is essential to achieving further gains in safety

performance.

Organisational cultures are sets of shared

attitudes, beliefs and social norms.

How cultures develop over time and how they can

be influenced are a key to safety.

“Motivation is the art of getting people to do what

you want them to do because they want to do it” Dwight Eisenhower

The social side of safety



A culture develops one individual at a time



Safety improvement requires change

Safety improvement is a ‘people change’ process.

Organisational level

• Structural

• Climatic

• Cultural

Individual level

• Behavioural

• Cognitive

• Social



A Holistic Approach to Safety



Summary

BBS safety should form an integral part of a safety

improvement program. • Must conform to the principles of applied behavior analysis (the ABC

model)

Safety is not just about what people do, but also about

what they think, believe and choose in the social

context of the workplace.

What individuals think, believe an choose is mediated by

neural processes that need to be well understood.

Psychology, particularly in the application of positive

principles still has much more to offer safety

management in our continued drive for improved

performance.

Copyright © 2013 E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. All rights reserved. The DuPont Oval Logo, DuPont™ and The miracles of science™ are registered trademarks or trademarks of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company or its affiliates.

Dr Rod Gutierrez Global Leader Culture and Change Management Sydney, Australia Email: [email protected]

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