Benchmarking your Behavior Based Safety process against best practice can help you identify opportunities for change to fully optimize your Return on Investment .

Some Behavioral Safety Processes can take 12-24 months to get you to Zero while others can take many years to truly impact injury rates. Often the difference is related to the design of the process and /or how well it is being executed.

Based on extensive scientific research examining BBS Process designs & Safety Leadership and their impact on incident rates, we have developed a comprehensive Behavioral Safety Maturity Ladder™. Reflecting the research findings, the Behavioral Safety Maturity Ladder™ shows that increasing ownership and coverage leads to greater injury reduction. Each level has been shown to exert an ever-increasing impact on injury rates.

Assessment Criteria
An excellent way for companies to benchmark their BBS process against 'Best Practice', the Maturity Ladder represents a continuum of five levels that range from Beginning (Level 1) to Excelling (Level 5). Companies achieving a level 5 are also likely to be close to achieving a level 5 on the British HSE's 'Safety Culture Maturity Index'.

The Maturity Ladder assists you in establishing the current level of your Behavioral Safety process, and identifies the actions required to help you realize a sustainable Zero Injury Rate.

The Behavioral Safety Maturity Ladder™ consists of a matrix comprising the following 10 elements:
 1. Ownership - Who is involved?
 2. Sampling Tools - What is the quality of the behavioral checklist(s) in use?
 3. Training - Who is trained in what?
 4. Observation Approach - Who is observing who?
 5. Contact Rate - Is the frequency of observation optimized?
 6. Quality of Observation - Are you targeting the right behaviors?
 7. Feedback - Who gives and gets feedback?
 8. Data Use - How are you using your BBS data?
 9. Sustainability - What are you doing to sustain the process?
 10. Marketing - How do you keep people involved?

The Assessment Process
The assessment process is relatively simple. Delegates are divided into small groups of 5 or so. Using a 'card sorting' technique for each Maturity Element, each group of delegates choose the card reflecting the answer that best describes their BBS process. Answers are recorded on the Maturity Matrix in their worksheet. This creates a Maturity profile identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the current BBS process. In turn, this identifies the specific actions required to help realize a sustainable Zero Injury Rate.

Outcomes/Deliverables
The recorded answers for each group are collated by the facilitator across all the participant groups to provide a 'consensual' view of the current status of the process. The resulting Maturity profile assists you in establishing the current level of your Behavioral Safety process against best practices, and identifies the actions required to help you realize a sustainable Zero Injury Rate (represented by the white spaces in the example below).

Delegate's responses to additional questions on their worksheets are also used to help develop a 'written' report detailing the recommended way forward.  This is presented at a 'close-out' 'question & answer' session with the HSE team and/or project team to clarify any issues identified.

Next Move
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