The main benefit of a well-established behavioural engagement tool is the insight you gain from seeing actual communication between individuals. The advantages are easy to see and understand:
- you learn what’s really going on
- you find out what people really feel
- everyone has a voice and feels listened to;
- you raise awareness (particularly around possible consequences)
- you uncover root causes of unsafe behaviours and provide positive reinforcement for safe behaviour
If you go a step further and record behaviours that have been discussed you gain added benefit, particularly if we use the data to best effect. So here’s a simple example of how to use this kind of data in JOMC’s Engage software.
A good starting point is to look at headline behaviours for a given period. This report is called ‘Cumulative Conformance Vs Non Conformance by Number’. The first image below shows a breakdown for a 3 month period (click images for a larger version):
Cumulative Conformance Vs Non Conformance by Number
The numbers are quite small because this is only a small organisation.
I chose to look in more detail at the headline behaviour ‘Health & Wellbeing’ as there is a large proportion of unsafe behaviours.
So next I returned to the report generation page and selected the specific behaviours under the ‘Health & Wellbeing’ heading. This is shown in the next image:
Specific behaviours
The specific behaviour that catches my attention is ‘Not Exceeding Working Hours’ although there are others I might come back to investigate in due course. Once again, the numbers are quite small but I am interested in the proportions.
Having had my interest aroused by this issue, my next questions are what lies behind these behaviours – what are the reasons for this behaviour? To answer that I select the ‘Root Causes of Non Conformances’ report having selected just that behaviour:
Root Causes of Non Conformances
This pie-chart shows that ¾ of these behaviours are attributed to a cause of ‘Time or Cost Benefit for the Company’. My interpretation of this is that employees are choosing an unsafe behaviour because they see it as being in the best interest of the business.
This may be due to perceptions or mis-communication, but the result is a choice of behaviour that the company does not expect or desire from its employees. Whilst the individual behaviours will hopefully have been dealt with at the time of the engagement, it feels like this is something that needs addressing more widely across the business.
There are many different ways to communicate a message to all employees: briefings, newsletters or one-to-ones etc. Another option, while we have the software open is to post a message on the home page, as shown in the next image. This has the benefit of enabling further comments to build up a wider dialogue on the subject:
Public comments in Engage
The public comment reads:
“I have been reviewing our behaviour trends. Good to see that there are a lot of engagements regarding “Health & Wellbeing”. A very significant unsafe behaviour is “Exceeding Working Hours”. The main root cause of this is “Time or Cost Benefit to the Company”. Whilst this is most noble it is not what the company wants from individuals. What the company really values is safe and healthy people who manage to get the work-life balance correct and therefore do not put themselves or others at risk.”
This was just one thread of data. I could’ve chosen to follow a different behaviour, which I may well now go back and do, looking at other issues I have a particular interest in. This may be driven by past performance, current campaigns or in response to a spate of incidents or concerns.
My example is just one way to use data. We run free webinars and give advice to steering groups that help you get more out of your focus on behaviours. Tell us your specific requirements and we’ll help you get more out of the time and effort you invest in engagement.
