Ken Chapman & Associates, Inc.’s Peer Factor service has been discontinued. However, SafePath Solutions,  created by Dr. Ken Chapman and Tony Orlowski, and based on their research and book Safety Beyond The Numbers is a modern and more effective behavioral-based workplace health and safety offering. To learn more about SafePath Solutions, please click here.

What follows is a description of KC&A’s former Peer Factor service. It was designed to support an organization’s efforts to sustain and enhance an already strong safety culture. It is primarily for organizations that want to take a behavior-based safety program to the next level by addressing one of the most common issues associated with Behavior Based Safety Processes: Achieving the “cognitive shift” from an employee believing that proactive and candid peer-to-peer safety behavior is a betrayal of a friendship, to a belief that true loyalty to a colleague/friend means assuring that “my friend” goes home healthy and whole everyday — even if he/she is temporarily unhappy with my openness and candor.

Peer Factor was a series of conversations aimed at increasing awareness of the risk of complacency while reducing employee hesitancy to both stop work amid safety concerns and report near misses. Between three to six sessions, three hours in length are typically required. Initial sessions focus on:

• The higher risk of complacency that exists in organizations with good safety records.
• The importance of trust in ensuring a safe workplace.
• How to raise safety concerns with others in a way that deals constructively with the issue or behavior while at the same time having a favorable impact on real time bias.

Case study, group discussion and team assessment assist the employee in thinking through the implications and risk associated with misplaced compassion, misguided loyalty and misaligned priorities. Getting beyond misplaced compassion means getting to the point where your safety is more important to me than staying comfortable by avoiding conflict. Peer Factor strengthens leadership, ownership and team involvement at all levels by establishing safety as an ethical responsibility. The ethical obligation to “do the right thing” compels employees to act in the best interest of the common good even when it is uncomfortable to do so. As a result, clients can expect:

• Increased ownership in sustaining a strong Safety Culture based on trust and teamwork
• Employees act in the best interest of their team members and the organization.
• Employees understand that safety is about fulfilling an obligation to “do what’s right” by my co-workers and those who depend on them at work and at home.
• Increased involvement from all levels in making the safe way “the right and only way” for both employees and contractors.
• Improved 360 degree communication regarding safety concerns, questions, and reports of near-misses.
• Increased candor as employees identify, discuss, and self-correct unsafe behaviors.
• Greater willingness to stop work as soon as safety concerns arise.

For more information about SafePath Solutions, listen to this podcast: