Association for Behavior Analysis International

It is not easy to implement an ABA protocol in a workplace. Above all the Behavior-Based Safety process that includes peer-to-peer observation, positive and corrective feedback, safety meeting with workers. Above all, in an Italian metallurgic plant that employs people prejudices due to previous contingencies made of command-and-control management style, abuse of punishment, political ideologies, etc. that converted in a deep resistance to cultural change. In 2015, management decided to implement a BBS process in a pilot department with about 100 employees with the prime goals of reducing injury and severity rate. The behavior analysts leading the intervention scheduled and delivered several presentations and trainings to employees all along the project in order to catch their consensus towards ABA and safety issues. Workers? opinions (i.e. verbal behaviors) have been tracked before-and-after the beginning of the observation-and-feedback process: people attitudes changed meaningfully and favorably towards colleagues, leaders, and managers. These outcomes matched consistently with the improvement of motorial safety behavior frequency (mainly by workers), of safety management behaviors intensity (mainly by leaders) and safety results (i.e. frequency fell by 16% and severity index fell by 56%). The speakers will describe the antecedent-based strategy (i.e. presentations) needed to introduce ABA smoothly in a conflictual workplace.

As proven by several RCT experiments and case studies, Behavior Based Safety processes reduce injury indices by establishing safe behaviors. This experiment checked the effectiveness of the BBS process in the emergency management, i.e. building safety behavior in time-pressure conditions. Emergencies are defined as any critical condition that determines a potentially dangerous situation and requires exceptional and urgent actions to be managed and restored. Researchers conducted the experiment in 24-7 paper production facility in Northern Italy. Observations during baseline have been collected in 4 weeks during all work shifts; Observations during the behavioral intervention lasted 2 weeks and covered all 24 hours. The emergency contingency was the rupture of the paper roll that implied an immediate and fast intervention of 3-4 operators to allow the resumption of production. Common sense presumes that the same safe behavior frequent and stable during routine contingencies, may disappear or lose frequency in emergency ones: first of all, the experiment demonstrates the statistically meaningful difference of same safe behaviors frequency between routine tasks and emergency tasks. Researchers used chi square test to affirm this. The 2 first weeks of the BBS intervention consisted in the delivery of positive and negative feedback: the experiment results checked with C Test confirmed a growth of safety behaviors both in emergency and normal condition and verified that those same safe behaviors reached same level of frequency in the 2 conditions after few months of implementation