Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
of procedures and protocols to regulate work and work behavior.
Roles and responsibilities were defined, tasks were described, and
employees were instructed to work according to procedures.
Certification of people, parts, and procedures became standard.
Technical risk assessment was introduced. The paradigm shift was that
a safe plant alone was no guarantee that accidents would not happen;
instead, teaching employees how to perform a certain task would
increase the safety. Focus shifted to acting according to the topic.
Sticking to rules is an important way of regulating behavior in many
regular activities today. The downside is that it only works in standard
situations.
Paradigm 2: Regulating behavior via rules will reduce the amount of
safety incidents.
1.3 SAFETY MANAGEMENT LEVEL 3
In the 1990s, companies were again facing the fact that the incident
rate stabilized at an unacceptable level, for that moment. More of the
same interventions no longer reduced the incident rate. A new break-
through in approach was needed. Not all the behavior in the work-
place could be described in procedures. Besides that, people don
t like
to be prescribed how to behave; they have a natural tendency to break
rules that don
'
t suit them. Procedures require constant management
attention that cannot always be provided. To address this, employers
needed to find another mechanism to control human behavior, and the
answer was found in looking at the social environment. Thus, the focus
shifted to personal behavior. The paradigm shift was that prescriptions
on how to carry out tasks were not sufficient for generating safety.
Employees had to be convinced to follow behavioral guidelines under
all circumstances, not only when prescribed; personal accountability
became part of the safety policy. A second element in this renewal was
the focus on social control in addition to management attention. It
was recognized that the behavior of the team had at least the same
influencing effect as the supervision of the boss. By recognizing that,
safety management also became a cultural issue. The new approach
embraced a social view on behavior and behavioral change. The team
was seen as the most appropriate level to enhance and guard safety
behavior. The ideal was that employees mutually challenge and stimu-
late each other to embrace proactive ways of behavior: solving an
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