One of the interventions that companies have implemented in accident prevention is behavioral observations. These preventive actions have different names depending on the organization that implements them, be it PBC, SSBC, etc. etc. However, in general terms, they consist of the same thing: making observations in the field of daily work and providing feedback "in situ" and proposals for improvement in the face of the statistical data collected regarding the most recurrent risk behaviors.
When properly implemented, the results are amazing. We see a progressive decrease in risk behaviors of the company over time and, therefore, in accidents. This makes sense given that risky behaviors (or out of standard) increase the probability that the worker suffers an accident by moving away from the way of proceeding that has been designed for this purpose (as a figure, there are more accidents in new people in the company and in tasks without procedure, possibly both related, hypothetically speaking, with the adaptive period to the task that has a certain degree of improvisation and adjustment).
Another result of the observations is the degree of commitment of the workers to safety: the formation of leadership teams, the training of monitors and observers, and peer observation encourages participation and integration into prevention.
In addition, when corrective or organizational strengthening measures are implemented, based on real data, greater effectiveness is achieved with the result and greater efficiency in the use of resources, involving and convincing even the most reluctant to implement changes in companies, to who "like to see that investments are made in a serious and responsible way."
However, there are also some bad practices in behavioral observation that prevent achieving these results. Among them:
• Leader team not properly constituted, demotivation among its members, loss of sense or motivation in the task to be carried out.
• Incorrect identification of critical behaviors to carry out the observation in the field, confusing "behavior" with "condition", identifying non-critical behaviors, etc.
• Interpreting the behavior and not describing the worker's behavior, attributing “causes” of which we are not sure or that are not entirely true.
• Covert observations to “catch, drop or discover red-handed” the worker, which clearly generates distrust among workers and disbelief in the intentions of the project.
• Observations made "to comply" with the requirement.
• Data falsified to “not harm” fellow workers.
• Lack of feedback or incorrect proceeding in the return of information, for example, giving more emphasis to the negative aspects than the positive ones, or not looking for solutions but guilty.
• Inappropriate handling of data in the statistical procedure, for example partial or erroneous data entry, loss of information, others.
• Not reporting on the progress of the project or definitely not implementing solutions to the problems detected.
These practices suggest that the different actors in the organization have not found the true meaning of these interventions. Some supervisors often comment that "it means more work to them", some workers believe that it is a persecution, that they are going to fire them, even some managers consider that it is a waste of time and money.
The problem happens many times to see the activities of a process as the end in itself. Something similar happens with the ISO implementation in some companies, since people focus more on having the documents as their ultimate goal, rather than improving and facilitating the processes through them. In prevention, the purpose of the observation cannot be considered to have the statistics or the observations made.
The true purpose of these projects is to reduce the probability of accidents due to risky behavior and thus improve the quality of working life of workers. If this is not understood, it will probably be a long time before people see the forest, as the trees obscure their view…
