Positive Reinforcement is a Skill

If you read the available management literature, you soon run into a mandate that is seldom questioned: Praise your employees often; give them a “thank you” when they do a good job; recognize their efforts; use verbal positive reinforcement for value added behavior. Supervisors and managers are told unequivocally, that this is the best way to increase performance, enhance supervisory-employee relations, create employee engagement, and increase retention—to name a few.

Why then do climate surveys and 360° surveys consistently uncover contradictory evidence? Why do surveyed employees working in companies with formal and informal recognition systems feel they are not being “recognized” for their efforts? Survey data is inconsistent, but results (by reputable sources) report “78% of the employees surveyed said they had not been recognized by their supervisor for their work,” and “52% or the turnover in business and industry is related to supervisory-employee discord,” (irrespective of what exit interviews say.)

Most books and experts teach that manager and supervisory verbal reinforcement should be delivered personally, immediately, specifically, sincerely, and frequently. There are other rules, but the net effect is that verbal positive reinforcement is a management goal; managers and supervisors are told to “find a behavior that deserves reinforcement.” At face value, this sounds appropriate and desirable. Unfortunately, there are a number of factors that may make it counterproductive to walk around the workplace attempting to deliver positive verbal comments to employees. When the wrong conditions exist, attempts to reinforce can backfire. For instance:

• The supervisor just returned from a training class and the employee is suspicious about the supervisor’s motives in “saying something nice.”
• The employee and the supervisor have a poor relationship—a history of disagreement, bickering, or hostile interactions.
• The supervisor has poor interpersonal skills and makes all his direct reports uncomfortable; his positive response sounds unnatural; he makes employees nervous.
  
• The employee’s peers have behaved similarly but were not noticed; the one employee received undeserved attention, so resentment is created among the work group.
• The employee who received a positive verbal comment is a favorite of the supervisor or a personal friend.
• The employee who received positive verbal comment has better equipment or easier tasks than the other employees, so it is easy for him or her to excel.
• An employee had to work twice as hard as the employee who received a positive verbal comment because his equipment broke or for some other reason he or she had to overcome several barriers just to get his job done, and he or she did not received a positive verbal comment.
• The employee who received a positive verbal comment just came back from time off for an injury; the other employees think he or she was malingering.
• The supervisor has never verbally delivered a positive verbal comment to anyone before and has just started doing it; why are they doing it now? Employees are suspicious.
  
• The behavior the supervisor comments about does not qualify for acknowledgment in the eyes of the other employees.
• A few minutes before the supervisor stopped to deliver a positive verbal comment to the employee, the employee had been engaged in an inappropriate, unsafe, or destructive behavior.
• The employee who received positive verbal comment for a behavior had a poor work history.
• The employee who received positive verbal comment is the best performer in the group.
• The employee who received positive verbal comment is embarrassed by public attention (other employees saw him receiving the comment.)
• The supervisor’s positive verbal comment sounded rehearsed, practiced, and unnatural.
• The employee who received a positive verbal comment is young and the older employees suspect favoritism.
• The company is about to go through some layoffs and the employees suspect that whoever the supervisor makes positive verbal comments to is not going to be laid off; so they develop animosity towards that employee.
• One supervisor delivered a positive verbal comment to an employee but a supervisor from another department just corrected the same employee for an inappropriate behavior.
• The employees have heard “thank you” so many times that they no longer notice it. The phrase has lost its meaning.
• The employees have seen all the supervisors trying to say positive things to their direct reports; this communicates to them that it is a job requirement and therefore has no value.
• The employee who received a positive verbal comment has been disciplined several times within the last few months.
• The employee who a received positive verbal comment is perceived by his peers to be a slacker who should be disciplined for poor performance.
• The employee does not appreciate the supervisors positive verbal comments about his or her work because the supervisor does not talk to the employee about the work frequently or indepth enough for the employee to respect the supervisor's opinion about his or her work behavior.
• The behavior that the supervisory chose to make a positive verbal comment about was a fluke; everyone who knows the job and what is really going on knows that it was a rare event, so the supervisors behavior is considered meaningless and symptomatic of his or her disinterest in the people and their work.
• The company has several types of tangible incentives for performance and the employees consider the supervisor's efforts trivial and unnecessary; they want cash and gift certificates.
• The company has jerked them around for years--making promises, surprising them with layoffs and pay changes. They don't trust anyone in management. Employees receive positive verbalizations as tactics intended to set them up for something negative about to happen.
  

I hope you are beginning to develop a sense of how the context—the circumstances, preceding conditions, history, situational factors, peer factors, supervisory interpersonal skills, company culture, and supervisory-employee interpersonal history coalesces to make the act of “wandering around the workplace trying to catch someone doing something good,” a risky and perhaps counterproductive activity. Any one of these items can negate the value of a manager or supervisor's attempt to positively reinforce an employee with a positive verbal comment.

In addition, when any or several of the preceding factors exist it is reasonable to assume that the supervisor's efforts will create an even greater relationship problem; it will throw fuel on an already incendiary situation. When the context is not supportive, attempts to reinforce employees with intermittent "stop by" visits are more likely punitive; the supervisor's unnatural act is aversive and the effect on employee morale, performance and engagement is also negative.

I suspect that employees in Fortune 500 companies are aware that their company has a corporate reward and recognition strategy, the purpose being to create a nurturing environment that “engages” the employee in the company’s values and goals—that indirectly motivates the employee to strive to perform. These employees have experienced countless celebrations, award dinners, award ceremonies, the delivery of jackets and hats for performance and the attempts by managers and supervisors to “treat them well.”

Most of these systems include recognition for “employee of the month or year; best performer; most improved; length of service; attendance; sales performance; suggestions; safety performance; retirement; and performance above and beyond. In addition, managers and supervisors are being held accountable for “reinforcing and recognizing” employee effort in order to elicit discretionary effort from employees.

Many company environments are saturated with positives and the employees have habituated to all this niceness. So much so, that they either no longer notice the companies attempts, they take it for granted (no longer see it as contingent upon their actually doing something exceptional), or they become cynical and scornful of this riotous facade. They see all the cash, certificates and merchandise as entitlements. Positive management attention for contribution becomes meaningless.

What is the solution? How do we reinforce and recognize employees in a meaningful way; how do we do we create retention and job satisfaction in a manner that achieves the objective—to show employees that that their efforts do not go unnoticed—that they make a difference? The answers are here, and here, and here.

Positive Supervision

Learning how to change or influence the behavior of others is simple in theory, but in the devil, as usual, is in the details. The books tell you to praise employees for good work. Sometimes they don’t like it because they either think you are faking it to make them work harder or they are uncomfortable because it is out of character for you.

You can be successful in establishing a more positive relationship with your direct reports if you read the series that begins below:

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Positive reinforcement works; it fulfills every employee’s basic need to feel valued—cared about by the organization, their supervisor and leadership. Positive reinforcement is precision recognition—it acknowledges the employees contribution in real time; it captures the moment when a valued added behavior—discretionary effort can be encouraged or discouraged.

Traditional rewards and recognition strategies do not facilitate employee behavior directly. They are most often presented for performance results and outcomes. Before the benefits of precise recognition—positively reinforcing specific behavior in real-time—were well known, management assumed that kudos received for results influenced the critical behaviors that led to those results.

There are several problems with this assumption. When an organization chooses to reward a job or department performance result, they cannot be certain that all the behavior that led to that result is in the best interest of the company. Subtle pressure associated with awards and recognition practices often encourages employees to do things—to engage in behavior that is detrimental to themselves, the team, the product and the customer.

Shortcuts, intra-team competition—even unethical behavior has been associated with employee competitive desire to “win”—to get the plaque, the jacket, or the picture in the company newsletter. Although the intentions of organizational rewards and recognition systems is appreciation and employee satisfaction, many employees are competitors and they want to be on top. Things can get ugly.

The top 10% of employees usually stay in the top 10%--given a fair opportunity. So they always “win.” Rewards and recognition systems seek to compensate for this by giving awards that are not related to performance, non-contingent awards—like, “the best attitude,” or “most positive team member, or “employee of the month.” These types of awards can trivialize a rewards and recognition process and derail their key objective of —to improve human performance.

In addition, assuming that employees are doing things in the best way to achieve the best possible performance outcome is often a mistake. High performers may engage in behavior that improves quality, productivity, or customer service but they do not share these “best practice behaviors,” with the team; to do so would disadvantage their opportunity for rewards and recognition.

Subsequently, institutionalizing the effective use of positive reinforcement in an organization is ultimately a risk management objective; a company’s performance and profitability is at risk when behavior is not effectively managed. Employee injury is an obvious liability to organizational effectiveness. The costs are well documented. Leaders and managers understand the critical importance of managing job safety behavior. Proper lifting, equipment placement, correct ergonomics—the behaviors necessary to prevent injury are precise and explicit.

Similarly, the effective application of positive reinforcement to specific, key job behaviors will increase productivity, quality, service and waste reduction. That is why overcoming supervisory and management resistance to the daily use of positive reinforcement is so essential to achieving the highest levels of human performance and engagement. The key to developing supervisory and management potential—to developing their skills, their ability to effect employee performance levels—is the precise, real time application of positive reinforcement to value-added job behavior.

Developing Positive Reinforcement Skill: Step 1

Think slow transition. Whatever you management style at the moment, any abrupt change in you behavior is over-interpreted by those you manage. Sinister agendas are proposed…word spreads rapidly; what’s up? The first change you need to make in you verbal behavior is to start eliminating words, phrases, comments and questions that convey negative expectations; blame, fault finding, parenting, dictating—you may have some destructive verbal habits that create a barrier between you and those you are supervising.

Self-observation is difficult. Our verbal habits are so ingrained that we sometimes even deny that we said something when a witness points it out to us. One bad habit that seems universal to anyone who parents, coaches or manages is the use of rhetorical questions to find out why someone has made a mistake—they either failed to do something we wanted them to do, or did it wrong. “What were you thinking?” or “why didn’t you think to ask? or “how do you expect us to get good service ratings if you behave like that?”

These kinds of questions only serve to emotionalize the situation—frustrating you and angering the employee. The accusatory tone creates a wedge between employee and supervisor. Other statements that purport to correct employee behavior but are equally destructive are things like—“You’re going to have to,” or “from now on, you need to,” or “start paying more attention.” Everyone is sensitive to the tone and intentions of language pointed toward them. If you have bad interaction habits, you need to identify them and eliminate them.

Many executive have personal coaches to help them develop positive interaction habits. In some organizations, supervisors work in pairs to help each other identify counterproductive verbal habits. They provide positive feedback to each other when positive verbal comments are made. Surveys that gather information from employees and peers can surface verbal habits that need to be changed.

Whether you identify destructive verbal habits through self-observation or some other means, you need to set the stage for the next part of Step 1—which will be to gradually increase the frequency of interactions with your employees. If you think your method of interacting is positive and relationship building, then move forward to the next phase described in the next entry.

Leadership Mistakes to Avoid

Always try to say positive things about your direct reports when you are going to ask them to do something extra, or something onerous that no one else wants to do. You have to set them up right or they may try to back out.

If they are not performing well and it looks like you’re going to have to fire them, try not to make them suspicious. You don’t want to imply that they need to change their work behavior; that would make them sad.

Don’t attempt to learn too much about the actual work they do. All that detail gets boring. Knowing the job is their business. If you make a few mistakes – so what. You have a big job and a lot on your plate.

Only make comments about the obvious performance elements of their job, like productivity. Try not to address the details of their work – like the challenges they have to overcome to get the job done. Best not to get into the weeds.

Stop by intermittently to say something positive; keep it superficial and use the same phrase over and over again – like, “thank you.” You want to make them comfortable and confident in the fact that you are predictable.

Try to change your management tactics every time you attend a management seminar or workshop. Let them know that you are looking for any gimmick that will work for you. If it embarrasses them – too bad. It’s your job to get them to work harder, and it’s fair to use any tactic you can find.

Try to say nice things to them when you have to; avoid giving them performance feedback. Let them figure out how to do the job. If they can’t do that, well – too bad.

Spend quality time with your obvious favorites; socialize with the people who buddy up to you and kiss your ass. You’re only human. Besides, you don’t want to take up your highest performer’s time with chit-chat. Some of these people think they are as good as you are, always coming up with ideas for improvements and the like.

Let them know who the boss is. Use a tone of voice, gestures, and words that tell them who is in charge. Don’t be afraid to show a strong emotion; that’s your prerogative. If they can’t guess how you like things done…well, naturally you get furious.

If you really have to say something positive, try to gush, use emotional words, and make it theatrical. You can tell you’ve hit the mark if their face gets red and they look like they want to run.

When you’re trying to be nice to them, it’s best to use some kind of cliché. Frontline employees are simple people and they like repetition. Say things like, “good job, and thanks.” Or things like, “I’m going to have to give you a pat on the back,” or “here’s an attaboy for pulling that double so that Jim could go to the hockey game with me. You deserve a warm-fuzzy for that.”

Try not to collect any personal information about the employee. Asking about wives and kids and hobbies only makes you look like an ordinary Joe instead of the boss. Make sure they understand that you don’t fraternize with your subordinates – only the employees you drink with, or invite over for a barbecue.

Let them know that a lot of the positive things you try to do are part of a management game that irritates you as much as it does them. Let them know that your boss is making you treat them nice to get them to work harder. They will appreciate your honesty.

Be sure you make the same positive comments to each employee – even the ones who are not doing their work. You don’t want to appear biased.

Treat everyone the same, irrespective of the difference in their contribution. Don’t fall into the favoritism trap. Even the people who screw up and cause everyone else to work harder deserve equal treatment.

Don’t be afraid to offend an employee if they deserve it. Being parental, authoritarian or inappropriately emotional is just expressing yourself honestly. After all, you are the boss and have a right to vent.

Try not to be squeamish about taking credit for something an employee did or said. You are the boss and they work for you, so any thing they do is because you are a good manager.

Never ask their opinion about anything; it makes you look weak. If you wanted ideas you would come up with your own. Asking employees questions makes you look like you don’t know more than they do; of course you do. Why else would you be the boss?

If they manage to force an idea on you, tell them you will look into it and then just forget about it. The boss has a lot to do and goofy ideas are just a distraction.

Make a big fuss over the employee of the month, but don’t let the same person get it more than once. That’s not democratic.

If you ever get trapped into saying something positive at an awards ceremony or something like that, make sure you really lay it on about the high performing employee. “The reason Jim wins every year is because he is the best.” The rest of the people can just face the facts that they are never going to be on top.

If anyone asks you on a survey or an interview or in conversation whether you positively reinforce your employees, always say, “Yes.” Your subordinates know better than to contradict you. Leadership is nutty about this kind of thing and HR positively has a cow if you say you don’t. Let them know that praise, attaboys, warm fuzzies and pats on the back are part of your style.

Don’t forget to greet all your female employees with terms of endearment like, “Hi honey,” or “Hi there little lady.” Better still, just call them all the same thing. They like “honey,” because it shows you are friendly; they will believe that you really think they are equal to men.

You Can Change Behavior and Leave Personalities Intact

Recently I’ve reached a personal “tipping point,” in regard to understanding human organizational behavior. Possibly, others have had a similar learning experience. At one time, I believed that I understood everything; I was patently certain that I could explain everything with a few basic precepts.

Time and experience eroded my self-confidence; the principles and practice of one discipline solved many problems, but left many unsolved. I started looking at other theories and disciplines—finding intriguing explanations for why people do the things they do. Unfortunately, the more I read the more confused I became. It was not unlike my experiences in reading philosophy (a fleeting experience I admit); I found something of value in every school of thought.

I saw that many apparently conflicting disciplines were talking about the same things using different words. The imprecision of language and the broadly different ways we experience reality lead us to explain things uniquely. Beneath the veneer of exaggerated differences lay complementary unification. Theories and explanatory models were isomorphic and homologous.

When one takes any approach, discipline, perspective, theory, or philosophy to its extremes, it becomes unintelligible. You can hardly blame anyone for seeking “the answer,”—the causal explanation. The ambiguity one experiences when confronted by several approaches—each equally convincing, but often mutually contradictory—encourages one to seek the psychological protection of one definitive answer. The riotous onslaught of authorities with their incontestable certitude drives us to seek some friendly port against this storm--one explanatory model of human behavior.

Each of us, by virtue of our genetics, developmental history, hormones, biochemistry, neurological makeup, behavioral history, the social context in which we are operating, and real-time situational factors is driven toward a way of interpreting what we see and hear—our special perspective. We are driven, heliotropically to engage the answers that best suit our nature; we are drawn like a magnet toward a world picture that suits us.

I struggled against the discomfort of trying to find a path through the maze. The book stores’ shelves hold hundreds of books on management theory and leadership, and the shelves of college book stores house dozens of competing theories that inform the authors of those books. The experts defend their fortresses of theoretical primacy, but I saw many interdisciplinary opportunities and salient synergies. When the rush of alternatives and competing ideas reached cognitive critical mass, I had my “tipping point.”

Organizations appear to go through a similar search for a comfortable understanding of their own dynamics, but since groups learn differently than individuals, thought and theories do not become organized and differentiated—learning is slow. Because organizations usually learn very slowly, the tipping point for an organization may only occur after performance problems have reached a critical mass.

Subsequently, many companies have gone through legions of performance improvement initiatives and supervisory and leadership training models. It is not unusual to find a business unit training their managers and supervisors in strategies that have conflicting theoretical underpinnings. Profiles and assessments that tell leaders and supervisors “what kind of traits, style, or personality,” they have are interesting, but using and applying the information is problematic. The ROI is seldom investigated.

Therefore, practical necessity demanded that I assign behavioral psychology—Applied Behavior Analysis, with its powerful principles of positive reinforcement, to its proper position in my understanding of organizational behavior. Behavior Analysis provides one with information about “why” someone in an organization (or any setting) says or does something. The behavioral platform presents a causal algorithm—a root cause analysis template for human action.

Lean principles and Six Sigma are robust tools for eliminating waste and improving quality in organizational processes. Similarly, Behavior Analysis is a powerful tool for explaining what environmental factors—what specific, precise physical or social factors—cause or caused an employee to do something (to behave in a certain way) and whether or not he or she is likely to behave that way again. Behavior Analysis brings the same explanatory rigor to human behavior that Lean brings to waste and Six Sigma brings to quality.

If you are creating an improvement storyboard, a Pareto chart, a fishbone diagram, a tree diagram, an activity network diagram, an affinity diagram or a behaviour-based safety checklist you need to know what a behaviour is (be able to accurately identify a specific behaviour without confusing it with characteristics, results, and fuzzy generalizations), determine what prompts the behaviour (like a ring prompts you to “reach for” your cell phone), and what encourages you to continue to behave that way (what reinforces the behaviour, as when you reach for the cell phone—open it up—and viola, there is someone on the other end to talk to.)

Does understanding what prompts a behaviour and what causes it to happen more than once explain all we need to know about people and organizations and management? No, but across the globe human performance is limited because leaders, managers, and supervisors do not understand the fundamentals of behavioural causation. They don’t know that much of the behaviour they see is not prompted by complex personality variables, but by immediate, situational factors that can be controlled to ensure that people behave in ways that support their best interests (safety being the most important)—the best interests of the product, their coworkers, and the customer.

If you have reached a personal “tipping point,” input overload, critical dysfunctional mass in trying to understand why people do the things they do, keep reading this blog. I can’t explain the meaning of life, but I can tell you why your teenager begs for money.

Applications of Behavioral Technology Before BBS: Part 2

Behavior-based safety (BBS) processes, borrow heavily from the science of behavior analysis, using behavioral tools to decrease at-risk behavior and increase the frequency of safe behavior. Many behavioral tools, included in but also in addition to those used in BBS, enable organizations to influence the behaviors that drive overall business success. Part 2 offers suggestions about how to capitalize on the skills, time, and investment you've made in Behavioral Technology through the implementation of BBS.

Why Were Many Behavioral Processes Not Sustained?

Why were processes with such profound effects on performance data not institutionalized and integrated into the policies, practices and values of these organizations? Why did most of these applications last no longer than a year? Although this is a subject of debate, the short answer is that the processes began as separate initiatives that ran parallel to the processes of the organization and that were mainly management driven.

The longevity of non-integrated, stand-alone initiatives driven solely by management depends on stability in the management ranks. Replacement of the management champion (usually the plant manager) created uncertainty and the initiatives lost focus and energy. The fate of the process was sealed when the new manager replaced any pre-existing management system, no matter how effective it appeared to be, with his/her own approach.

What Was Missing?

Those who have concerns about the sustainability and vigor of a current behavior-based safety initiative, might ask, “What was missing from the processes that fizzled?” The answer is that, first of all, these early initiatives ignored two important elements – employee involvement and continuous improvement.

One of the mistakes made in early attempts to apply behavioral technology to business issues was an emphasis on teaching managers and supervisors the intricate details of behavior analytic science. This created some educated and effective performance managers, but it did nothing to ensure the institutionalization of the concepts and principles throughout the organization’s systems and processes.

These applications often failed to include workers in problem-solving sessions; behavioral tools were seldom integrated into management systems; they existed as a parallel process with special action plans and, deadliest of all, they required more paperwork! Systems issues causing performance problems were not typically identified and resolved using the process and behavioral technology applications were structured as programs, becoming what its practitioners had striven to avoid…flavor-of-the-month status.

Sustaining Behavior-Based Safety: Borrowed and Integrated Tools

For processes to endure, they must become integrated into the systems and practices of the organization. They must be interwoven into the core of the culture. They must become part of the way things are done, indistinguishable and interdependent. Any stand-alone or parallel, performance improvement initiatives, including BBS, sooner or later will be abandoned.

So, how do you avoid the program du jour dilemma?

· Transform your behavior-based safety initiative into an integrated process that extends the use of its existing tools and structures to a broader range of performance objectives.

· Go back to the tool chest. There are several powerful behavioral tools that will deepen and enrich your current process by solving a wider range of problems. The more problems a process can resolve, the higher the probability it will be institutionalized and sustained.

· Don’t weigh your systems (and personnel) down with additional forms and reports that could be seamlessly joined with existing data and feedback mechanisms.

New Applications

The behavior-based safety processes you have been using and refining can be extended to new opportunities with results as significant as those you have obtained in safety:

·

Business drivers

o Customer satisfaction

o Cycle time reduction

o Defect reduction

o Systems improvement

Using employee involvement and continuous improvement processes, upstream analysis can be applied to business performance variables. Behaviors related to problems and solutions are identified and the performance environment (systems, design, conditions, etc.) is changed to support behavior that will improve performance.

·

Observational skills

o Identify new behaviors for performance improvement

o Identify significant behavioral variations

Observer skills in evaluating the overall work environment and identifying specific behaviors encouraged or discouraged by environmental factors can be applied to discovering better ways to do things. Behavior that leads to improvement can be added to processes and tasks.

Advances in BBS Observational Tactics

A common complaint among companies that have been implementing behavior-based safety is that, over time, there is a distinguishable loss of interest – among all employees – leaders, managers, supervisors, and frontline employees. The robust energy exhibited in the first few months has deteriorated; the observations, meetings, and interest have devolved into a monotonous routine.

At every conference I hear BBS champions and Safety Managers voicing the same request: “Do you have any ideas about how we can give our BBS process a ‘shot in the arm?’” BBS processes in which observers are enlisted voluntarily suffer more conspicuously than companies that have institutionalized their BBS process as a job requirement and a “condition of employment.”

As an aside, I believe that BBS processes should be voluntary until employees are familiar with the process and have refined and customized tactics to functional efficiency. At some point you have to ask the question, “If BBS is essential to ensuring our employees work more safely, then we need to make it mandatory.”

Safety training, job safety analysis, incident analysis, accident investigation, hazard identification, safety audits, safety policy, permits, emergency response – all these practice and many more are not considered options; they are institutionalized and mandatory components of safety management. Similarly, observations – work sampling for safety – should be an essential and obligatory part of safety management.

Getting back to the issue of how you can reenergize your BBS process, in previous blogs I have suggested some alternatives:

• Performance Observations – use observer skills to identify behaviors that add value to quality, productivity, teamwork, reduce waste and more.
• Employee Initiated Observations – allow employees to spontaneously initiate an observation of a coworker and record those data
• Emergency/Critical Task Observations – identify situations, tasks, conditions that are rare but possible. Allow observers to watch employees doing drills for their particular circumstances
• Workgroup/Team Observations – use observers to watch teams working together routinely or during intermittently scheduled non-routine events like plant shutdowns for major maintenance

I have just added the last observational practice, and I am aware that some companies are already doing observations of work group “results” as well as behavior. For the most part, BBS observations are based on predetermined checklists that are developed based on data review of incidents and injuries.

The variations I am suggesting are within the skill sets of properly trained observers – that is, observers who have been trained to discriminate, define, and identify specific, observable behaviors and provide a written description of that behavior in a way that allows others to make an observation using that description. If your observer group thinks that “has a good attitude about safety,” is a behavior you are on a slippery slope.

A well trained observer group should be able to watch an individual or team task being performed and identify value-added behaviors, list them, and communicate that list to other employees. If one employee does one thing that saves time or product waste, a trained observer should be able to discriminate that behavior and pass it on to other employees – thereby saving the company time and money.

Many companies do not know enough about Behavioral Technology to ensure that their observers are more than “list-checkers.” If your observer training class does not include a strong section on how to identify behaviors from non-behaviors, then your observers are not going to be able to add value to the observational process by identifying behaviors that will create a safer working environment.

You should be able to provide the following assignment to your trained observers with the confidence that they will be able to do it effectively:

“Warren, would you and Mary do an observation of the shift-change in Head Stack Assembly. I want to see if we can identify any behaviors that can be changed or added or deleted to decrease wasted time and improve the hand off. We’ve been having some operations problems that seem to be related to communications, but I want you two to observe what they are doing and saying and let’s see if we can smooth out the process.”

If properly trained, Mary and Warren should be able to handle this assignment without any problem. They should be able to come back with a list of specific behaviors that employees can say or do to make things run more smoothly, cut out waste, and improve efficiency. Once the list is developed, then it can be used as a checklist by everyone involved in the shift change or it can be used by the observers in a formal way – to do observations.

Safety observations of individuals working together – looking for coordination, cooperation, task alignment, proper sequencing, and peer support are logical applications of observer skill sets. The use of observational checklist on individual workers performing task sequences is important, but only one application of the observational process; limiting your observers to this application creates boredom, disinterest, and is a waste of the resources and investment you’ve made in observer training.

If your BBS process was properly implemented, then your steering committee can meet with a selection of observers and organize the proper tactics for implementing any one of the 4 suggestions bulleted above. Behavioral Technology is about understanding how to identify value-added from wasteful behavior in an organization.

Six Sigma, Lean, and many other initiatives seek to eliminate waste and increase quality and service levels. BBS is based on the application of Behavioral Technology to safety and the identification of a safe from an unsafe behavior is one use of its principles. Challenging your observers to apply their learning to other organizational performance opportunities is a key to maintaining their interest and enthusiasm and ensuring that your company receives the highest return on their investment.

Applications of Behavioral Technology - Before BBS: Part 1

Behavior-based safety (BBS) processes, borrow heavily from the science of behavior analysis, using behavioral tools to decrease at-risk behavior and increase the frequency of safe behavior. Many behavioral tools, included in but also in addition to those used in BBS, enable organizations to influence the behaviors that drive overall business success. In fact, the tools of behavioral technology have been applied in a wide variety of business and industrial settings, consistently improving human performance by at least 20 to 30 percent.

It is time for organizations to fully utilize the behavioral technology that is the foundation of their behavior-based safety processes. Organizations could and should maximize the investment made in BBS by expanding, adapting and applying behavioral technology and employee observational skills to the company’s strategic operational outcomes – productivity, quality, Six Sigma, Lean Principles, Wellness, and so forth.

Behavioral tools, employee participation, observational skills, steering committee involvement can all be utilized to build upon and add value to your current BBS process. A systematic integration of behavioral tools into all areas of operations would not only improve performance and your training investment, but would also strengthen your existing BBS process.

How Were Behavioral Tools First Applied?

The first applications of behavior analysis in the work environment occurred in the early 1970s. Ed Feeney at Emery Air Freight, Richard Mallott at Western Michigan University, and Aubrey Daniels at Behavioral Systems applied behavioral technology to organizational performance problems and attained significant improvements. Key performance objectives for a business unit were targeted. The variables selected included quality, productivity, timeliness, error rate, cost control and turnover.

Behavioral technology brought some tools to management practices. The notion that we should be managing behavior “what people do at work,” instead of trying to change their personalities (using inspirational rhetoric to change attitudes), was a new one. Leaders, managers, and supervisors did not know what a “behavior” was or was not. The behavior of “putting on your safety glasses,” is clear and obvious today; 30 years ago safety management was not that precise. Effort was dedicated to changing an employee’s attitude about safety – getting him or her to “think safety,” and to be “conscientious” about safety.

Other ideas that behavioral technology brought to management was concepts like “positive feedback;” providing employees with specific, timely information about what they “did right” that would improve safety or performance. Until behavioral technology became popular, the only feedback employees received was information about what they were doing wrong.

Finally, the concept of positive reinforcement – the idea that value added behavior and good performance should be recognized, rewarded, celebrated, and acknowledged was unheard of 40 years ago. Safety recognition was stalled on downstream indicators and results. No one understood that when an employee was rewarded for “doing something right,” they would tend to repeat that behavior.

In the 1970s, we trained managers and supervisors in the science of behavior analysis, and then they created action plans to apply behavioral tools systematically. They identified important behaviors that would improve quality and productivity and reduce waste. We initiated performance measurement, and graphically presented daily performance feedback. When performance improved they regularly and promptly delivered recognition and reward to employees.

These early applications brought significant performance improvement in a short period of time. The introduction of a performance management system and positive recognition and reward created almost instant operations improvement when used correctly. Turnover was cut in half, absenteeism reduced by 70%, productivity increased by 40%, machine running time increased from 75% to 98%. Results so staggeringly successful, that Roger Milliken, the owner of Milliken textiles systematically applied behavioral technology in 60 of his plants. Milliken later became the first Malcolm Baldridge Award winner.

Although some of these methods are practiced in today’s business environment, keep in mind that measurement and feedback on behavior were conspicuously missing from most organizations in the 1970s. Also, most managers and supervisors were not trained in managing performance and tried to motivate workers by threats and intimidation. The transition from "my way or the highway," management styles to "Reward and Recognition," based management has been a long one - full of missteps and wrong turns.

More about this in Part 2.