Nothing has created more confusion in the field of safety than the introduction of the BBS – Behavior Based Safety process.
To different professionals BBS means different things exactly like the parable of the blind men and the elephant dating back to Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain writings. It is a story of a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and conceptualize what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant's body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the elephant based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other.
The uncanny similarity between this story and the understanding of the BBS process cannot be underestimated.
Some have experienced injury reductions and they are ecstatic while most have not seen anything significant except the amount of money that went to the consultants’ pockets.
In a nut shell the whole BBS game is about agendas.
The fundamental issue here is that in most cases management does not have time to dig deeper and assess objectively the long term advantages or disadvantages of the process. When a typical business manager is saddled with injuries and the shareholders breathing fire on their neck all he is looking for a temporary but good sounding solution. BBS fills this slot perfectly.
BBS is all about behavior correction and most managers find it convenient to assume that it must be the worker behavior which is behind all their safety troubles. To make it further convenient workers are also not present to defend against this flawed argument when decisions are made to go for a BBS as a solution. So the management agenda of visibly working on safety is fulfilled.
Now come in the consultants offering instant solutions. They showcase data and statistics to support how BBS reduced injuries elsewhere and how it will deliver the same results provided management listens to them. Since management has no previous hands on experience of BBS they give their formal nod. What better way to find mental peace than to “BUY” BBS process.
The consultants agenda is fulfilled.
The managers in the field who will eventually be responsible for implementing BBS now have their hands full with this new tool and hence their jobs temporarily secured as BBS could take anywhere between 1 to 2 years depending upon the size of the organization, to be fully implemented.
Their agenda is fulfilled.
What about the final outcome? Well!! I have yet to witness any worthwhile value for money in so many organisations that I have personally visited. The things that are still universally visible are continued lack of management commitment, poor knowledge of safety basics at field level, increased bureaucracy because of added formats, templates and reporting and a growing apathy to safety itself in the staff because the gains are nowhere comparable to the price the Co. paid by way of time and money.
My verdict: BBS is a very expensive way of doing those simple safety activities what you should have been doing anyway. Practice basics and excel in that.
Max Safety has been providing very practical and fit for purpose BBS programs which are extremely relevant for the Indian context and have helped our clients in several ways.
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