Punishment or Prevention

by Bobby Jones (http://www.bobbydjones.com)

Many incident investigation programs are focused on determining who was at fault. Much effort is spent on who to blame for an incident and therefore who will receive some form of punishment.

This type of behavior-based approach can affect one employee at a time and is not conducive for preventing other employees from demonstrating a similar behavior. It is well known that humans are prone to making mistakes.

From a prevention point of view, focusing more on at risk behavior works at the symptom level and is considered correction activity and not prevention activity.

In order to achieve prevention, an organization must be able to understand how the existing management system, in place, allowed the at risk behavior to escalate to the incident level.

Policies and procedures are a management system mechanism for establishing desirable employee behaviors. An organization must take a logical, unbiased look within the management system to understand what changes need to be made in order to absorb the at risk behaviors and prevent the incident from developing.