In 1913, the French engineer Maximilian Ringelmann studied how horses perform. He came to the conclusion that the performance of two draught animals was not twice as high as the performance of a single horse. Surprised by the result, he extended his research to humans. He found that men only invested 85 percent of their individual pulling power in tug-of-war with three and only 49 percent with eight.

In the field of behavioural sciences, this phenomenon is called “social loafing”. The phenomenon occurs when the individual performance is not immediately visible. In fact, social loafing is a form of unconscious cheating that we are all guilty of.

It is also remarkable that the individual performance never quite drops to zero. So why not drop to zero altogether? Well, because a zero performance might get noticed; with all its consequences, such as social exclusion or a bad reputation. People simply have a perfect nose for the level at which their non-performance can be noticed.

Social loafing does not only occur in physical performance. The principle applies fully to mental performance. The larger the group or team, the smaller the individual contribution. The larger the group or team, the smaller the individual contribution. Until the performance of the group reaches a lower limit, at which point the performance does not drop any further.

Social loafing has other curious effects. In groups, we hold back, even when it comes to our responsibility. This is called ‘diffusion of responsibility’.

If you ever find yourself in the water and need to be rescued, hope that there are not twenty people standing on the quay watching. The chance of being rescued is many times smaller than when one random walker passes by…
But responsibility is not the only thing that is shrugged off. For the same reason, groups also take greater risks than individuals; the so-called ‘risky shift’. People simply behave differently in a group than they do on their own. These disadvantages can be reduced by making individual performance as visible as possible.

Vooraf: de semantiek scherpstellen
Wanneer iedereen vertrekt vanuit zijn eigen premisse van (veronderstelde) definitie, zonder die vooraf klaar en duidelijk op elkaar af te stemmen, krijgt men al meteen een Babylonische spraakverwarring die niet in een-twee-drie opgelost raakt met wat over en weer getoeter op sociale media.

Al zeker niet wanneer bepaalde deelnemers aan de discussie van meet af aan vast gebetonneerd lijken in het grote gelijk van de eigen vooronderstellingen.
De discussie begint reeds bij de semantiek. Hebben we het hier over ‘gedrag als oorzaak van ongevallen’ of hebben we het over ‘gedragsgerelateerde ongevallen’?

In die zin is een designfout in een technisch ontwerp evenzeer gedragsgerelateerd. Te beginnen bij het gedrag van de ontwerper en eindigend bij het gedrag van de medewerker die als gevolg van diezelfde designfout een ongeval overkomt.
Wat in bepaalde discussies eveneens als een onuitgesproken aanname naar voor komt, is dat sommigen de term ‘gedragsgerelateerd’ – al dan niet doelbewust – verwarren met ‘oorzaak van falen’ en daar in een beweging ook een verantwoordelijkheidsvraag willen aan verbinden. Quod non.
In een recente ‘discussie’ op sociale media die we vanaf de zijlijn volgden, was de bijdrage van Sim Doolaeghe (RiskConsulting) ongetwijfeld een van de meest genuanceerde reacties:

“Als aanvulling/nuance … De onderzoeken tonen aan dat ongevallen in 90% van de gevallen hun directe oorzaak vinden in een ‘menselijke handeling’, dit als een van de elementen binnen de multicausualiteit die eigen is aan een ongeval. Het is dus iets specifieker dan het gedrag. De grondoorzaken moeten we zoeken tot op het organisatorisch niveau. Hierbij is belangrijk een gedegen onderzoek te voeren, waarbij tijd en middelen niet altijd voldoende worden voorzien door de organisatie.”

De hoogste tijd dus om enige klaarheid te scheppen in deze zaak. Tenminste voor zij die bereid zijn deze boeiende materie onbevooroordeeld tegemoet te treden.

[Grafiek ontleend aan Dr. Frank Guldemond; NVVK, Gedrag en veiligheid, 2018]

De gedragstheorie ‘old school’ (die binnen het bedrijfsleven nog steeds hardnekkig het veiligheidsdenken beheerst) gaat uit van de mens als rationeel denkend wezen. Een wezen dat zijn gedragsbeslissingen neemt op grond van een beredeneerde afweging tussen voor- en nadelen, tussen kosten en baten, tussen inspanning en veiligheid.
In het verlengde van deze zienswijze wordt veiligheidsgedrag gezien als het product van kennis en inzicht, vakbekwaamheid, procedures, instructies en supervisie. Veiligheidsgedrag, een kwestie van gezond verstand dus. Waar hebben we dit de laatste tijd nog gehoord?
Eveneens kenmerkend voor deze visie, is dat er in het kader van een arbeidsongeval al te gemakkelijk gedacht wordt in termen van ‘gedrag als oorzaak’ => ‘ongeval als gevolg’, terwijl de werkelijkheid heel wat complexer is, namelijk ‘gedr ag als result ante van een veelheid aan interne en externe prikkels’ (zie verder).

In de ‘old school’-visie kiest men bij voorkeur voor het bijsturen van onveilig gedrag door middel van bijkomende (cognitieve) opleidingen, door het aanscherpen van procedures, door het inzetten op toolboxen en LMRA’s, door postercampagnes, … De lijst met voorbeelden is wat dat betreft onnoemelijk lang.
Dit alles geschraagd door een sterke (high energy) operationele discipline. Want dat mag toch worden verwacht van medewerkers, zo klinkt het dan.
Wanneer aan alle randvoorwaarden is voldaan, werken mensen – gestuurd door hun ‘gezond verstand’ – van nature veilig. ‘Safety behaviour by nature’ dus.

Consultant tegen klant: “Wist je dat gedrag van mensen grotendeels onbewust gebeurt?” Klant: “Echt waar? Daar heb ik nu nog nooit iets van gemerkt!”
Een belangrijke ommekeer die de theorie ‘old school’ onderuithaalt, kwam in 2002 met Daniel Kahneman [Nobelprijs-winnaar 2002; Dual System Theory]. Verder bouwend op de inzichten van Kahneman kreeg Thaler in 2017 vervolgens de Nobelprijs voor zijn onderzoekswerk rond ‘nudging’. Samen vormen ze in belangrijke mate de pijlers van de gedragstheorie ‘new school’.
De gedragstheorie ‘new school’ gaat ervan uit dat het gedrag van mensen grotendeels onbewust wordt aangestuurd.

De Dual System Theory maakt namelijk onderscheid tussen twee gedragssystemen in de hersenen: een rationeel systeem dat bewust gedrag produceert en een emotioneel systeem (of limbisch systeem) dat automatisch gedrag produceert.
Onbewust aangestuurd of automatisch gedrag maakt ten minste 95% uit van ons gedrag. Wetenschappelijke bronnen zijn hierover unaniem: Ondermeer Kahneman (2002), Bargh (2004), Tiggelaar (2005), Baumeister (2006), Dijksterhuis (2009) laten vanuit een verscheidenheid aan empirisch en klinisch onderzoek eenzelfde geluid horen.
In de gedragstheorie ‘new school’ wordt gedrag gezien als het product van emotionele drijfveren en prikkels vanuit de omgeving.

Vanuit evolutionair oogpunt is het emotioneel systeem het oudste systeem: geprogrammeerd in de oertijd, vertoont het alle kenmerken van onveilig gedrag. Niet in het minst omdat het limbisch systeem (onder meer) bij voorkeur kiest voor de weg van de minste inspanning, kritiekloos waargenomen gedrag kopieert, risicotolerant is, behoren tot de groep belangrijker vindt dan veilig werken, snel went aan onveilige situaties en niet of nauwelijks geconnecteerd is met het cognitieve deel van ons brein.

Vanuit deze nieuwe zienswijze wordt onveilig gedrag vooral bijgestuurd door het ontwikkelen van nieuw aangeleerd veilig gedrag. Waarbij het gedragsontwikkelproces loopt langsheen het pad van cognitie (weten wat en hoe), vaardigheid (kunnen), competentie (toepassen in eenvoudige situaties) en finaal autonoom toepassen in de praktijk (vakbekwaamheid). Dit alles geschraagd door de nieuw ontwikkelde (low energy) veilige operationele routines.

Uitgangspunt 1:
Alle gedrag komt voort uit het brein. Gedrag is in de regel onbewust en wordt gegenereerd door onze automatische piloot.

Uitgangspunt 2:
De meeste veiligheidsovertredingen gebeuren onbewust en zijn het resultaat van interne of externe drijfveren. Gedrag is daardoor veranderlijk en situationeel bepaald.

Uitgangspunt 3:
Automatismen zijn vele malen sterker dan verstandelijke inzichten. Een regel of voorschrift leidt niet vanzelf tot overeenkomstig gedrag.

Uitgangspunt 4:
Veilig gedrag ontstaat wanneer mensen een besef hebben van risico’s, naast de vaardigheden om ermee om te gaan. Dit kan alleen als mensen beschikken over het juiste aangeleerd gedragsrepertorium.

Uitgangspunt 5:
Het aanleren van nieuw/veilig gedrag is het resultaat van inzicht, model-leren, motorisch leren en feedback op het vertoonde gedrag.

Uitgangspunt 6:
Sociaal leren [model-leren] is het sterkste mechanisme in het aanleren van (on)veilig gedrag. Management en informele leiders zijn de belangrijkste modellen.

Uitgangspunt 7:
Mensen zijn van nature risicotolerant en zijn standaard te positief over hun veiligheidsprestaties. Deze vorm van zelfoverschatting leidt tot het hanteren van minder veiligheidsmarges, met alle mogelijk nefaste gevolgen van dien.

Uitgangspunt 8:
Mensen willen graag bij het team behoren en zijn bereid hiervoor concessies te doen. Een onveilig handelend team kan mensen verleiden tot onveilige handelingen welke ze in hun eentje nooit zouden stellen.

Mensen hebben zowel een ‘eigen identiteit’ als een ‘sociale identiteit’ die er totaal anders kan uitzien. Gedrag in een groep is anders dan wanneer mensen alleen zijn. Daarnaast kunnen mensen zich in de ene groep anders gedragen dan in een andere groep.
Het gedrag van mensen in een werkcontext wordt beinvloed door verschillende variabelen. De veldtheorie van Lewin stelt dat het gedrag van mensen een functie is van de interactie tussen hun karakter enerzijds en de situatie anderzijds. Dit laatste wordt meestal kortweg ‘de omgeving’ genoemd.

Samengevat komt Lewin’s veldtheorie hierop neer: het veiligheidsgedrag van mensen wordt bepaald door:
• wat ze zelf willen
• wat ze kennen en kunnen
• wat de omgeving van hen afdwingt
• wat de beschikbare middelen mogelijk maken

Interessant is dat dit model in grote mate wordt ondersteund door de indeling van groepsdeterminanten van de Nederlandse Raad voor Leefomgeving en Infrastructuur (Rli). Het gedragsmodel Rli (2014) weerhoudt vier clusters: (1) bekwaamheden, (2) motieven, (3) omgeving, (4) keuzeprocessen.

Bij minstens 90 procent van de arbeidsgevallen is menselijk gedrag in het spel. Gedrag is het resultaat van de interactie tussen het individu en zijn omgeving. In die zin is het overgrote deel van de arbeidsongevallen gedragsgerelateerd.
Een analyse van de oorzaken van een arbeidsongevallen daarentegen is heel wat complexer.
Op het niveau van het individu spelen zowel bewuste als onbewuste besllssingsprocessen een rol, in een belangrijke mate aangestuurd door zijn rationele competenties en zijn emotionele drijfveren.

Met betrekking tot de interactie met de werkomgeving komen gedragsprikkels vooral vanuit enerzijds de brede werkomgeving (zoals het team, de fysieke werkcontext, de socio-culturele omgeving, de heersende veiligheidscultuur, …) en de onderneming als geheel (bedrijfscultuur, waarden, normen, rol en positie van HSE, …).
Tot slot, gefaciliteerd vanuit de brede werkomgeving: de beschikbare arbeidsmiddelen en de immateriële ondersteuning (zoals opleiding, coaching, machtsafstand,…)

We can’t ignore it: for several decades, occupational safety has been high on the agenda everywhere. And rightly so.

Since its inception, the field of occupational safety has undergone quite an evolution. In the early days, the most important safety function was that of a safety engineer.

As technological evolution accelerated, the focus of attention shifted from technical safety aspects to the organisational side of occupational safety. As a result, the implementation of all kinds of safety care systems became very important. Occupational safety became more and more an administrative field, in which the management and updating of ‘the system’ became predominant.

Meanwhile, it is clear to everyone in an organisation that the impact of safety care systems on the total perception of safety is running into its own boundaries.

Safety culture is a concept that has rapidly gained popularity. On the one hand, it remains a vague and sometimes elusive concept; on the other hand, it is undoubtedly the aspect with the greatest impact on your safety results. After all, it is about the collective way in which an organisation deals with occupational safety.

Changing and/or developing a safety culture is a matter of influencing collective behaviour. Influencing individual behaviour is quite a challenge in itself, let alone group behaviour. Influencing organisational behaviour, which has often grown over decades, is therefore a challenge of a much higher order.

There are still managers, executives and those in charge of support services who – consciously or unconsciously – assume that (safety) behaviour is the result of a rational and analytical thought process. A thought process that can be steered in the right direction by means of legislation, procedures, instructions and/or other forms of safety communication. However, this vision is outdated.

Insights in the behavioural sciences are now light years away. The research of leading scientists such as Kahneman, Thaler, Ajzen and Cialdini sheds a completely different light on aspects such as consumer behaviour, traffic safety or safety behaviour on the work floor.

All behavioural scientists now agree that human behaviour is largely the result of unconscious, intuitive thought processes that have very little to do with rational considerations.

It should be clear to everyone that in order to develop, change and/or influence safety behaviour, knowledge of the relevant legislation is not sufficient. Insights into electrical and/or chemical risks or the management of the applicable safety care systems in your organisation are no longer sufficient either.

From now on, other competencies are on the agenda: competencies that have their roots in the world of psychology, sociology, biology and anthropology. But also strengthening your personal skills and qualities, such asrelational intelligence, self-motivation and authentic leadership, are of the utmost importance.

Let’s be clear: in existing training courses for safety specialists, the focus is still on legislation, technical safety, organizational safety and related disciplines. The legislator is hopelessly lagging behind.

The legal responsibilities of the hierarchical line do not provide an adequate answer to these behavioural challenges either, and neither do the compulsory training courses that organisations have to offer to their managers.

When you have a few dozen projects on the counter, your memory is inevitably tainted by certain people whom you simply cannot forget, even years later. Not in the least because they emphatically manifested themselves as purebred standard-bearers of occupational safety in the workplace, averse to any form ofpeer pressure.

Call them ambassadors, promoters, naysayers or whatever. It doesn’t matter, they just do it.

The story behind these remarkable employees has always fascinated me immensely.

For example, I still remember Jürgen, site manager at one of the larger construction companies. A solid individual, all positivism.

One day Jürgen and I had an informal chat ‘off the record’ over a cup of coffee. After a short while, I asked what exactly drove him to be so fanatical about occupational safety…

From day one of our programme on sustainable safety culture, Jürgen was one of the most fanatical and active fans. He never missed an opportunity to set up a series of safety improvement initiatives on the sites for which he was responsible, one more creative than the other. ‘First safety, then productivity’ was more than just a slogan to him. What was remarkable was that the profitability of his sites and the motivation of his employees were among the best in the group.

This was (literally) his answer:

“I have actually learned on the job, I started at the bottom step as an assistant/bricklayer on a construction site. I worked for a restoration company for a long time. One day, while my wife was pregnant with our son Benjamin, I was working on the roof of a church, at a height of 45 metres... not buckled up. “We’ve been doing it like this for years, nothing can happen to me,” I thought smugly.

At one point I slipped and slid down. In a split second I thought my life was over. It was a miracle that I got caught in the gutter at a height of 30 metres. I came out of that frightening experience unscathed…”

“At another stage in my career, I was a foreman. Every morning we picked up the people from the team with the bus from work, including D.

One day, the impossible happened: shortly after lunchtime, when walking onto a simple scaffolding, D. stumbled onto the work platform and fell backwards, in between the collective security. He hit the ground as was lethally wounded. He was taken to the hospital, where he died the next day.

You don’t want to know what the mood in ‘team 1’ was when returning home after that accident. It was awful to have to drop off his lunch box and tools at his house.Nobody should ever have to go through that experience.”

After that, there was a blank stare on Jürgen’s face. . It seemed as if both dramas were unfolding in front of him all over again…

“These two events have fundamentally changed my view of life, but above all, they have definitively changed my view of occupational safety.

Since then, I’ve been trying daily to make everyone around me more aware of, first and foremost, working safely. After all, we only have one life.”

As true promoters of safety, management and senior management can be expected to have a regular and proactive presence on the shop floor.

For this specific function group, it should be evident that they refuse to make any concessions when it comes to safety, whether or not in the interest of the production results. To such an extent that they must fully meet any meaningful demand for safety resources and support.

Regardless of the fact that, from a legal point of view, this group bears ultimate responsibility for occupational safety in the workplace, line management can first and foremost be expected to set an impeccable example. As true safety ambassadors, we can expect them to coach their immediate supervisors in managing the correct safety behaviour in the workplace.

By doing so, the much-needed trust of the immediate supervisors in keeping line management informed of possible safety issues grows. The fact that line management creates the necessary preconditions for the team leaders to tackle safety challenges themselves is a first step towards collective safety ownership.

All too often, this is a highly underestimated function group, also when it comes to occupational safety. Direct managers can be expected to turn every safety meeting into an inspiring learning moment and to encourage the people in their team to report any unsafe situation immediately.

They are the first and also the most powerful lever to give direct feedback on the safety behaviour of their employees. This way, it is possible to continuously work on behavioural development, change and influence.

In a strong safety culture, operational employees are not passive objects but actively cooperating ones. This function group can mainly be expected to care not just for their own safetybut also for that of their colleagues. This obviously means that they must never look the other way and react immediately to unsafe actions.

Equally, they should be expected to report unsafe situations and even formulate proposals to improve safety at work.

If you thought that we’ve reached the end of the line by now, you are wrong.

What about the following groups?

Unfortunately, ‘They have nothing to do with occupational safety’ is a frequently heard statement and they themselves are usually the first to say so. However, nothing could be further from the truth.

Occupational safety and health is also manifestly an issue in the office, especially since ergonomic risks or falling and tripping are one of the most common causes of occupational accidents. Therefore, office workers also have an ambassadorial role to play, not least with regard to customers, visitors or other external parties.

This group can and should be expected to add value to your safety culture, not to devalue it. It is a matter of enforcement, and this should start during the contract negotiation phase.

Working on strengthening the safety behaviour of a specific function group within your organisation, for example of your direct managers, requires a completely different approach than working on the development of your safety culture.

Strengthening your safety culture is a matter of everything and everyone in your organisation. After all, safety culture is about the way in which your organisation as a whole deals with occupational safety and, by extension, with the well-being of its employees.

For the sake of clarity of the story, we start from the assumption that the questioner means the overall safety culture of his/her organisation.

Knowing your starting position is essential; there are many ways to do this accurately. We advise everyone to be very careful with the result of a quick scan for the following reasons:

– The result of a quick scan is the reflection of your personal opinion and as such, it is not representative of what is going on within your organisation as a whole.

– The result of most quick scans is based on a limited number of questions, which usually leaves a lot to be desired in terms of validity and reliability.

Measuring is useful and necessary, as long as the right things are measured correctly.

The question shows that the only yardstick used is Hudson & Parker’s maturity ladder.  Just to be clear: cultural maturity is only one way to look at your safety culture. Limiting yourself to this leads to one-sided and usually wrong conclusions. Compare it with the conclusion that an Olympic weightlifting champion has the potential to win the hundred-meter sprint…

“On top of that, a culture of security cannot be expressed in a single figure!”

This statement does not belong to me, but to Prof. D. Parker, co-developer of the famous maturity ladder. So, map out your safety culture in a ‘nuanced’ way. The following cultural aspects are all at least equally important, mainly because they complement and interpret each other.

>Your safety character profile

>Your cultural maturity – choose sufficient and relevant safety topics

>Your topic analyses, to indicate averages

>Position of your sociocultural variables

>The scores for the 5BI model (Five behavioural influencers – see also StepStones for safety model)

Let’s start with the concept of ‘safety culture’.

There are few misunderstandings in this respect: by analogy with Deal & Kennedy’s well-known statement regarding corporate culture (‘The way we do things around here’), we can state that safety culture can simply be described as ‘the way your organization deals with occupational safety’.

What makes a safety culture ‘a dime a dozen’ and what makes a safety culture a ‘world-class culture’?

The answer is simple: the number of hierarchical levels and the number of employees within each of those levels who play a lead role. By ‘playing a lead role’ we mean: showing safety ownership at all times. In other words: the number of employees, right across the organisation, who are responsible for their own occupational safety and that of all colleagues, contractors, suppliers and/or visitors. And without pass responsibility onto ‘the organisation’.

In this type of what is also called ‘high reliability’ organizations …

• everyone regards safety as a value
• everyone is always alert in expecting the unexpected
• everyone always perfectly understands what is expected of him/her
• everyone is always open to new ideas
• every employee wants to make a difference
• Employees believe that their own behaviour is the determining factor.
• all employees spontaneously watch over each other’s health and safety

Executives in particular …

• do not confine themselves to managing operations, but show authentic leadership
• see attitudes and behaviours of employees as a reflection of their own leadership

If only it were true… With such ill-considered statements, executives and/or senior managers completely ignore the peculiarities of the human brain and the way in which behaviour comes about.

Why is this so?

Usually, they unconsciously start from the classic but largely outdated behavioural theory that states that employees on the shop floor make a conscious and well-considered trade-off between the pros and cons of a certain behaviour and make their behavioural choice on the basis of this positive or negative balance. Moreover, it assumes that these choices, whether or not formalized in some procedure or work instruction, are seamlessly converted into perceptible safety behaviour.

If this were really the case, it would mean that every employee within the organisation would continuously rely on the energy-guzzling cognitive part of his or her brain for all his or her behavioural decisions. Something that no human being is capable of. After all, the most current scientific research states that 95 percent of human behaviour is fully automatically controlled by the ‘low energy consuming’ emotional part of the brain (e.g. Kahneman, Thaler, Cialdinni).