In Part One of this blog entry (Influencing safety through social marketing, Part One) we talked about the importance of understanding the behavior that lead workers to resort to unsafe acts. We then discussed the components of a social marketing program to influence the workers to change their behavior. Today, Dr. Elie Daher will lead us to discover examples of social marketing projects conducted in the Oil and Gas industry.
Have any social marketing programs been successful in the oil and gas industry?
Yes, there are a few companies and safety councils that have implemented social marketing. In 2008, the Work Safe British Columbia examined the impact of OHS materials aimed at young workers aged 18-24 in US and Canada through content analysis, online and focus group discussions. A wide variety of methods were used to recruit participants for the online experiment including posters in workplaces, personal visits to the workplace, announcements from instructors at trade schools to students in trade schools, on-line ads on trade-related job sites, and referrals from other participants. Visit Work Safe British Columbia website for a summary of the research project or click here to download the research report.
In 2007, ExxonMobil also did a similar program for employees who frequently travelled to worksites around the world. The company was said to have struggled capturing workers’ attention and motivating them to adopt safe and healthful behaviors to avoid the risks of traveling, e.g., prolonged immobilization, exposure to communicable and tropical diseases and water and dietary issues, without overusing mandatory controls which are difficult to develop and enforce. The research team randomly selected a sample of less than 125,000 employees from Houston, Texas for a period of 6 months and borrowed concepts from social marketing, public health program diffusion and consumer information processing to test and evaluate the effectiveness of health risk communications. Click here to read the abstract of the research report.
Yet another organization that used social marketing in their safety program is the Workers Compensation Board of Nova Scotia (WCBNS). The organization ran a successful television advertising campaign depicting the impact of injury – a warehouse fall, an amputation in a grocery meat department, and a crushing under a forklift is once again on the air. The ads tested well in market research, with above-average recall. More than 70 per cent of Nova Scotians said the ads provoked thought about workplace injury and its impact. The ads were also graphic in nature. But a vast majority said the ads were acceptable for evening television. Click here to download the technical presentation of their research report.
All three organizations in one way or another used social marketing to promote behavior-based safety to better catch the attention of their target respondents.
Do you think social marketing will have its moment of glory in the oil and gas industry?
Why not? As an industry, workplace safety has never been more important. The public health sector has used social marketing for the past years with considerable success. Undoubtedly, the oil and gas industry has the financial capacity and human resource to implement and effectively monitor social marketing campaigns. With management support, safety leaders can easily carry out social marketing campaigns tailored to specific workgroups (i.e. young workers, frequent travelers, confined space entry workers, etc.). If they can do it, we can, too.
*This article was originally published in the safety editorial column of HSE Now, a new online magazine developed by the distinguished Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) catering to Oil and Gas professionals interested in HSE matters. This is an edited version of the article. Click here to read the original article.
Better yet, read the technical paper SPE 165611 entitled, “The Human Chain – A Different Approach to Behavior Safety Program Through the Use of Social Marketing Concepts” by Dr. Elie Daher, which was prepared for presentation at the SPE Latin-America Conference in Health, Safety, Environment and Social Responsibility Conference in the Oil and Gas Industry held in Lima, Peru, June 26-27 2013. The paper was also presented at the Society of Petroleum Engineers’ (SPE) Asia Pacific Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition in Jakarta, Indonesia.