Page 46 - Serious Incident Prevention How to Achieve and Sustain Accident-Free Operations in Your Plant or Company

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24 Serious Incident Prevention

knowledge and allocation of resources, are analogous to Covey’s descrip-
tion of a gardener exhorting a flower to “Grow! Grow!” while limiting the
water and fertilizer to other plants in the garden. 2

Inadequate Recognition

Individuals tend to place priority on activities that generate potential for
favorable personal recognition. Recognition perceived as certain to occur
following satisfactory performance is particularly powerful in driving de-
sired actions and results. Clearly, effective reinforcement is not possible
without timely knowledge of performance. Furthermore, in the absence of
meaningful recognition, it is unreasonable to expect individuals to sustain
excellence for the long-term.
Without accurate feedback, managers may unknowingly undercut the
serious incident prevention process by reinforcing results accomplished
through eliminating, short-cutting, or deferring safe work practices. A man-
ager may favorably recognize personnel for their efforts to minimize the
time required to complete a maintenance shutdown when the manager does
not know that recognized safe practices were violated to save time.
Misguided reinforcement, made in the absence of an accurate feedback sys-
tem, can lead to a culture where performance of the work to prevent inci-
dents is considered optional rather than an organizational value that cannot
be compromised.
Management bonus plans based upon organizational performance have
been a part of corporate culture for many years. The expansion of bonus
plans to lower levels of the organization and increasing percentages of com-
pensation tied to such plans is a growing trend. In some organizations, the
base compensation for both managers and nonmanagers is reduced and
placed “at risk,” with receipt contingent upon organizational performance.
Typically such plans provide a range of possible outcomes—ranging from
loss of all “at risk” compensation for poor results to receipt of several times
the “at risk” amount for outstanding results.
The impact of bonus plans on decisions and other behaviors serves as a
testimony to the power of reinforcement. The designated measures that de-
termine the size of the bonus become the focus of attention. When signifi-
cant compensation is at stake, managers can be tempted to take actions that
may increase this year’s bonus, even though such actions may not be pru-
dent from a long-term perspective. When production volume or reductions
in maintenance cost are a significant part of the measurement used for the
bonus calculation, for example, managers may tend to defer needed main-
tenance and may be tempted to push production rates too far.