1. BASIC PRINCIPLES IN OCCUPATIONAL HYGIENE
Day 5

2. 19 – BEHAVIOUR AND CULTURE

3. Impacts of Behaviour in Occupational Hygiene
Worker behaviour has an important influence on exposure to hazardous agents in the workplace
Using contaminated tools
Using soiled personal protective equipment (PPE)
Poor housekeeping, working untidily or not cleaning up after work

4. Impacts of Behaviour Failing to use PPE properly when needed
Unhygienic behaviour such as failing to remove protective clothing and wash hands before a meal break
Failing to switch on a ventilation system
Handling a material vigorously instead of carefully
Standing downwind of an exposure source

5. Minimise Individuals Impact
Good engineering controls
Good operating procedures
Training workers
Supervision
Education regarding contaminants

6. "Swiss Cheese" Model of Accident Prevention
The "Swiss Cheese" model (Reason 1997), suggests that there are multiple, but imperfect, layers of defence against accidents, as shown below. Accidents occur when failures occur simultaneously in all the defensive barriers.

7. Motivation and Behaviour Modification
Antecedents - Behaviour - Consequences (A - B - C) model
Antecedents create the initial motivation to act
Instructions from the manager, publicity campaigns and how these are received which depends on workers background
Behaviour is the observable act
It can be quantified and is objective
Consequences are what happens after the behaviour
Did the instruction help or hinder them, e.g. were they able to work more easily or was the job made harder. Will they do it this way again?

8. Behavioural Intervention
A behavioural intervention can be planned in three distinct stages as follows:
Motivation: Firstly it is necessary to motivate individuals in order to get them to want to change their behaviour.
Instigation: Once people are motivated they need to be supported to enable them to change behaviour.
Maintenance: When a behaviour has been changed efforts need to be made to ensure that it doesn’t revert back.

9. Health and Safety Culture
When a pattern of behaviour becomes widespread in an organisation it can be described as the organisational culture
Culture can be a nebulous concept – a simple definition is “how we do things around here”
Culture defines the unwritten rules of an organisation
Once a behaviour becomes embedded in the organisation's culture it can be hard to change
An organisation's culture can be said to be positive for health and safety if it encourages behaviours that minimise incidents and exposure to risk
Negative cultures are often characterised by fear and blame, which inhibit reporting of dangerous conditions and inhibit improvement. Employees flout the rules and managers turn a blind eye

10. An Example of a Culture Maturity Ladder
Source: GlaxoSmithKline