Publisher
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Place of Publication
Chattanooga (Tenn.)
Abstract
Introduction Industrial businesses spend approximately 1 billion dollars per week on non-fatal workplace injury expenses (2024 Workplace Safety Index, 2024). The current research hypothesized that behavioral observations will lead to a reduction of an injury probability. A behavioral observation is a peer-observation conducted to identify at-risk behaviors in the workplace by completing a behavioral checklist. Behavioral programs involving observations and feedback have been found to reduce injury rates year-over-year (Ludwig & Laske, 2023). While behavioral observation programs have been shown to reduce injuries in the aggregate, we investigated the impact of individual observations on the reduction in the probability of injury in the days following. Methods The data analyzed were collected from 2017-2019 and 2022-2023 from a chemical manufacturing plant and oil refinery plant respectively. A rolling sum time-series logistic regression analysis was performed. This determined whether observations (normalized by work hours to reflect the number per 8-hour shift) over the previous seven days decreased the odds of an incident (dichotomized by if they occurred or not) occurring over the next seven days. Oil Refinery Plant Results The analysis from the two-year sample (2022-2023) resulted in a 9.38% incident probability occurring over any seven-day span across five departments. One additional observation per shift over a 3-day period was shown to reduce incident probability by 1.21%. This was predicted to lower the number of incidents from 25 to 23 per year, resulting in two fewer incidents annually for the five departments studied. When extrapolated to the entire facility, with over 50 departments, one additional observation per shift could prevent at least 20 incidents annually. Chemical Manufacturing Plant Results Results from the three-year sample (2017-2019) indicated that each additional observation can reduce the odds of an incident occurring by 23% (Manufacturing Department) and 17% (Maintenance Department) over the next three days. Over a year, observations could reduce total incidents by four incidents and 16 incidents, respectively (Sant et al., 2022; Granowsky et al., 2023). Discussion Our analyses of the two different organizations show a relationship between the number of safety observations conducted and the reduction in injury probability over the next week. The current research has demonstrated that through employee-driven safety initiatives such as highlighting behavioral observations, the overall workplace safety can be improved. Employee Value Proposition (EVP) can further be fostered when the work environment focuses on employee safety.
Date
11-9-2024
Subject
Industrial and organizational psychology
Document Type
posters
Language
English
Rights
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Included in
Behavioral Observations Reduce the Probability of Injury for a Week
Introduction Industrial businesses spend approximately 1 billion dollars per week on non-fatal workplace injury expenses (2024 Workplace Safety Index, 2024). The current research hypothesized that behavioral observations will lead to a reduction of an injury probability. A behavioral observation is a peer-observation conducted to identify at-risk behaviors in the workplace by completing a behavioral checklist. Behavioral programs involving observations and feedback have been found to reduce injury rates year-over-year (Ludwig & Laske, 2023). While behavioral observation programs have been shown to reduce injuries in the aggregate, we investigated the impact of individual observations on the reduction in the probability of injury in the days following. Methods The data analyzed were collected from 2017-2019 and 2022-2023 from a chemical manufacturing plant and oil refinery plant respectively. A rolling sum time-series logistic regression analysis was performed. This determined whether observations (normalized by work hours to reflect the number per 8-hour shift) over the previous seven days decreased the odds of an incident (dichotomized by if they occurred or not) occurring over the next seven days. Oil Refinery Plant Results The analysis from the two-year sample (2022-2023) resulted in a 9.38% incident probability occurring over any seven-day span across five departments. One additional observation per shift over a 3-day period was shown to reduce incident probability by 1.21%. This was predicted to lower the number of incidents from 25 to 23 per year, resulting in two fewer incidents annually for the five departments studied. When extrapolated to the entire facility, with over 50 departments, one additional observation per shift could prevent at least 20 incidents annually. Chemical Manufacturing Plant Results Results from the three-year sample (2017-2019) indicated that each additional observation can reduce the odds of an incident occurring by 23% (Manufacturing Department) and 17% (Maintenance Department) over the next three days. Over a year, observations could reduce total incidents by four incidents and 16 incidents, respectively (Sant et al., 2022; Granowsky et al., 2023). Discussion Our analyses of the two different organizations show a relationship between the number of safety observations conducted and the reduction in injury probability over the next week. The current research has demonstrated that through employee-driven safety initiatives such as highlighting behavioral observations, the overall workplace safety can be improved. Employee Value Proposition (EVP) can further be fostered when the work environment focuses on employee safety.
Department
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Dept. of Psychology