Using Behavior Science to Maximize Human Performance
Authors: Lopez Juan Carlos , Lopez Monica Alexandra , Friedl Walter , Arango Maria Elena , Duran Monica Cristina , Shibani Hamed Al , Allison David , Bordage Pierre 
Published: December 2021

Authors use behavior science to help organizations maximize human performance through a cost-effective and sustainable approach. Such approach is based on transformational leaders and employees’ engagement, so they embrace a humanized management system by conviction, not by imposition.

This paper shows how to use organizational psychology principles in real case applications, resulting in holistic business improvements, including financial, safety and service quality performance.

The authors developed the Engineering Human Performance (EHP) methodology, by improving the Behavior Engineering Methodology (Lopez, et. al., 2020) to help organizations achieve outstanding and sustainable levels of human performance. Over the last ten years, this methodology was successfully applied to more than 50 business processes in an oilfield services company.

The EHP four-stages process uses frontline employees’ wisdom to identify sources of behavioral variance, measure adherence to expected behaviors and formulate changes to the operational context to pursue high levels of procedural adherence, sustainably. EHP incorporated statistic models to demonstrate its significant impact to business results, using a fit-for-purpose digital platform.

A combination of a coaching program for managers to embrace a leading with purpose approach (Sinek, 2020), and workshops with the front-line associates, generate a healthy flow of communication across the organization.

The leading with purpose program improves managers’ leadership by voluntarily selecting and engineering transformational behaviors they adapt and adopt to improve the effectiveness of their leadership style. The impact of the program is measured for statistical significance by applying the Multi-Factor Leadership Questionnaire (Boss, Avolio, 1996) before the coaching program starts, and 90 days after the last session.

Workshops with front-line associates use scientific principles to understand the sources of behavioral variance and formulate intervention plans that drive procedural adherence by conviction, not by imposition. An innovative element of EHP is the ‘behavior empowerment center (BEC)’. The BEC coordinates the systematic measurement of adherence to critical behaviors in the front-line, captures and verifies statistical significance of the data, analyzes trends, and prepares reports depicting the levels of behavioral adherence, so crews receive soon, certain, and positive feedback on a regular basis. This feedback loop elicits levels of adherence above 90%, sustainably, and eliminates losses associated to behavioral variance. The BEC uses a unique digital platform designed to bring consistency to the feedback loop to front-line employees and managers.

A case study is used to exemplify how EHP is being applied by a major rig company, to improve human performance in workover operations. The paper illustrates the remarkable results of the leading with purpose program and describes the Stages 1 (select processes that are causing loss), 2 (behavior analysis), 3 (baseline and intervention) and Stage 4 (scale-up) of the EHP methodology.

Authors consider that EHP offers an innovative, and cost-effective approach to helping organizations maximize human performance, in a systematic and sustainable manner. The application of the methodology shall not be limited to the oil and gas industry, as the focus on incorporating the human factor to inconsistently applied processes is affecting many industries, if not all.

The main challenge faced by authors in the implementation of the methodology is management commitment. Some managers expect improvement programs to bring immediate results, which could undermine the sustainability of the benefits. EHP grants sustainable improvements, provided the organization is committed to scale-up the program until results are significant. Achieving these milestones require time (from 6 months to 2 years), resources, and persistency. The leading with purpose program has proven effective in getting the proper levels of management commitment, to support EHP and deliver outstanding results. The paper shows a statistically significant improvement in the leadership style of the management team and how it is helping the business of the case-study company.

As for the way forward, authors are exploring options to incorporate artificial intelligence into the behavioral measurement, not to replace the face-to-face interactions, but to increase the accuracy of the behavioral measurement and speed up the feedback loop.