Behavioral Based Safety (BBS) Program for Company N: Case Study

Question 1: Assessing Safety Culture

Company N has been in existence since 1960. It is a multinational corporation that is engaged in the design, manufacturing and worldwide distribution of shoes and sports equipment. One of its many factory sites currently has 300 employees manning the operations office. A quarter of the employees are constantly on the move between the office and the production lines in the plants to assess and address any problems that may have occurred. The rest are operators who are stationed at the office working in shifts, monitoring and managing the movement of goods within the country and overseas. Half of them are locals while the rest are foreigners. All of them have a good command of English. A majority of them are diploma holders.

The production lines in the factories have about 1300 workers. They consist of a mixture of races and cultures from all over the world with ages ranging from 25 to 50. Their work involves manual labour like construction of individual shoe component from the start to the end of the production line, maintenance, housekeeping of the premises, etc. Most of them are locals and are only able to read and speak English.

There are 100 delivery trucks running on the roads at any time during operating hours. The drivers are all locals. They work in shifts, driving for a few hours per shift with breaks in between. All of them speak in their mother tongue to their supervisors. While the various work nature poses a wide range of risks and hazards compared to other industries, there are also ergonomic issues to consider in different settings. Company N’s CEO has engaged you as a Behavioural Based Safety (BBS) assessor and facilitator to develop the company’s BBS program.

Your first task is to assess the current safety culture level of company N. You decided to design a BBS survey to be conducted at the company. You intend to design your questions based on three elements below: 

1. Leadership

2. People

3. Process

Design FIFTEEN (15) questions (5 questions per element) for this survey. Collect at least FIVE (5) samples of data from the survey. Evaluate, analyse and present your data in the form of charts or diagrams and discuss the results. You are to derive the formula for calculating safety culture and determine the safety culture value from this survey.

After viewing their observation methodology and tools, you proceed to develop an observation checklist that is tailored to the nature of their job.

Create a behavioural based checklist suitable for the production line covering the following identified attributes:

1. Body use

2. Tools and equipment

3. Personal protection equipment 

Illustrate at least FIVE (5) elements under each attribute. 

In order to raise awareness of the BBS program and provide a guideline for its implementation, design a BBS standard operating procedure (SOP) for the company. Using a standard SOP format, develop a BBS SOP and explain how BBS processes can be implemented and maintained for Company N.

Discuss if the various workplaces (operation rooms, production line, warehousing, loading bay, etc.) are able to either use the same SOP, or if each requires its own SOP.

You realised that company N’s BBS program will not be effective unless it utilises analysis tools to solve their at-risk behaviour problems. Hence, you decided to teach the BBS working committee to apply the ABC analysis. To reinforce the knowledge, you decided to give an illustration of the model based on actual problems.

Conduct the ABC analysis for Company N. Illustrate TWO (2) at-risk behaviours from the production line and warehouse (one from each location). Present both answers onto TWO (2) separate ABC analysis templates.