e Lecturer Anne Pinney said that acknowledgement for safe behaviour
must also be earned.

Positive reinforcement the
way to change behaviour

by Dan Keeton

The best incentive for safe behav-
iour is sincere acknowledgment of
that behaviour, rather than physical
rewards, a safety expert told the
I.W.A. National Safety Convention
in mid-July.

Anne Pinney, a clinical psycholo-
gist with more than 20 years in the
occupational health and safety field,
said workers can either be positively
or negatively reinforced regarding
their work place practices.

With positive reinforcement, “peo-
le are getting what they want, they
like it, they're being acknowledged,”

Pinney told the delegates. “With neg-
ative reinforcement, people are doing
it grudgingly, just enough to get by.”

'o make her point, Pinney hid a
one-dollar coin on one of the tables in
the large convention hall. Everyone
knew where the loonie was hidden
except for one delegate, who had the
task of finding it.

Bruce Stelmaker, safety director
for I.W.A. CANADA Local 1-85,
agreed to be “it.” For the first minute
of his search, the rest of the dele-

cette!

s

gates said nothing as he roamed the
room.

For the next minute, they called
out “no” whenever he veered away
from the coin’s location. For the
remaining time, they said “yes” as he
got warmer until he finally found the
loonie.

Stelmaker acknowledged after-
ward that he’d wanted to quit
searching during the period of no
response from the delegates. Pinney
called that an example of “extinc-
tion” — when a person gets no
encouragement for an idea or initia-
tive, she or he eventually quits try-
ing.

The “no” response is equivocal to
punishment, Pinney said. “Punish-
ment is very effective at stopping
behaviour. It will not start new
behaviour. It will box people in.”

Stelmaker’s performance picked
right up with the “yes” responses,
Pinney noted. In fact, since negativ-
ity has a profound effect on people, it
takes about four “positives” to out-
weigh a negative, she added.

Not all positive reinforcement is
beneficial. Pinney recalled a lineman

io

e Some conference delegates attended internet workshops for OH&S

activists instructed by Local 1000’s Bob Hird and Local 1-423’s Ben Landis.

Photos by Dan Keeton

_ sliding down a guide wire to the

cheers of his workmates. Positive
reinforcement is something that
“gets you what you want,” she noted,
whether the outcome is good for you
or not.

Negative reinforcement is usually
punishment. People perform to avoid
punishment. The supervisor using
such tactics however is positively
reinforced because that person gets
the desired results, said Pinney.

“So punishment is very attractive
to a lot of people because you get
what you want very quickly from
someone else.”

The problem is that it produces
very low rates of performance and is
very short-term, she noted. In fact, it
has longer-term negative conse-
quences. “When there’s a lot of pun-
ishment going down it will increase
aggressive behaviour by 900 per
cent.

“Punishment will only stop behav-
iour. It won't start it.”

Pinney used the term, “extinction
burst,” to describe the process
whereby safe practices taper off.
That can be caused by squelching
new ideas because the old methods
are more familiar and therefore com-
fortable. And extinction happens
when unsafe conditions fail to mate-
rialize after constant checking, she
noted.

Pinney gave the example whereby
she was called to investigate a
methane explosion in a mine. She
found out that the foreman failed to
check hourly for the presence of
methane pockets as required. The
reason? “There hadn’t been a
methane pocket found for 14 years.”

Rewards for safe behaviour “must
be as close to the accomplishment as
possible — not the annual safety pic-
nic,” said Pinney. It must be sin-
cerely delivered “and it must be very,
very personalized, to that individ-
ual,” she advised. “It has to have an
experience for people that is really
earned. That’s something to feel
proud of.”

Reinforcement does not work
when the reward is always the same;
when workers are “bribed” into safe
behaviour; or when the supervisor
giving the award is not like or

respected, she noted.

_ Acknowledgment for safe behay-
jour must also be earned. “There’s
nothing more unfair than treating
unequal people equally,” Pinney
asserted. “You devalue reinforce-
ment if you're not also willing to hold
back reinforcement for people who
are not being safe.”

Reinforcement also works well
when individuals in a crew like and
work well with each other, said Pin-
ney. And the best way she’s seen to
achieve that is to allow workers
“much more management of the
whole process, their budget to run it
and some guidelines to help them
know how to treat each other or how
to work through difficulties.”

There are two kinds of reinforce-
ment to work towards: social rein-
forcement, the inter-relations among
individuals, and tangible reinforce-
ment. The former includes letters of
commendation and public and pri-
vate verbal praise. Greater work
freedom and choice of desirable
assignments also help, Pinney said.

While opposing financial incen-
tives — echoing earlier comments
from I.W.A. CANADA national pres-
ident Dave Haggard — Pinney sup-
ported certain tangible rewards for
safe behaviour. These can have what
Pinney called a “trophy value.”

These can include items such as
special T-shirts for a crew or trinkets
with logos (Pinney noted some work-
ers in one-industry desired items
with the company logo, while those
in another strongly rejected the
idea). Some can be related to a
worker’s outside interests.

The important thing is that “tangi-
bles aHaetal prompt a person to feel
good inside, and internal reinforce-
ment should occur.”

Tangible reinforcement should
have a strong “memory anchor” so
that the item is associated in the
recipient’s mind with safe practice,
Pinney advised.

It should also be associated with
social reinforcement.

Pinney found in her experience
that “it’s not the thing that reinforces
us” — referring to the reward — “it’s
the acknowledgment of someone who
can really value what we do.”

Emphasis on production first
can result in injuries and death

by Dan Keeton

Workers are injured because
often it’s easier to engage in unsafe
work practices, a leading expert in
work place safety told a conference
of I.W.A. CANADA delegates.

Anne Pinney, a Colorado-based
clinical psychologist, entertained
and engaged participants at the
union’s National Safety Conference
while delivering the serious mes-
sage that we need to change the
ways we approach occupational
health and safety.

“Many negative acts are inher-
ently reinforcing,” Pinney said in
addressing a session on “Peer
Observation Programs” attended by
union delegates and some manage-
ment people at the July conference
in Kelowna, B.C.

It’s often easier to cut corners in
safety because it gets the job done
with little hassle. fasteadl we need
a culture of positive reinforcement
for safe practices, Pinney said.

Pinney used several examples
from her wide experience in moni-
toring industrial work practices to
illustrate how the drive for maxi-
mum production causes injuries and
takes lives.

“Many safety programs focus on
results, not behaviour,” said Pinney.
She was a consultant 20 years ago
at a coal mine in which the top pro-
ducing foreman routinely broke
safety regulations yet had an acci-
dent-free record. agement took

no action despite Pinney’s report
and three months later a young
worker on that foreman’s shift was
killed going under an unsupported
to}

Pp. E

“T realized right then that when
we measure things like no-lost-time
accidents or the absence of an inci-
dent, we’re measuring at best a
measurement of probability or luck,
not necessarily that safe behav-
iour’s going on.” It results in a prac-
tice of “propping up cadavers so you
can meet the numbers,” said Pin-
ney.

Many safety programs are intro-
duced and fail, she noted, because
there are no attempts to change
behaviour. Indeed, many safety
practices are only followed because
workers are afraid of getting caught
and disciplined for infractions. “If
it’s a police state, you're not going to
have safe habits you can rely on,”
she asserted.

Workers who do work safely get
blamed for being slow on the job so
that safe performance is often pun-
ished, Pinney observed.

It’s similar for management.
Managers are measured for produc-
tivity, not safety, “even though the
rehabilitation after the accident
might cost more,” she noted.

Pinney said her “best teacher” for
this example was a BC Hydro line-
man who lost an arm in a trans-
former mishap:

Continued on page twenty-four

LUMBERWORKER/SEPTEMBER, 1999/7