A Brief Case Study in Behavior-Based Safety

Most traditional safety systems focus on tracking injury-related incidents (e.g., OSHA/MSHA recordables, lost-time accidents) as a means of evaluating safety success. Although it is important to track these events, the incidents themselves are most likely the result of actions taken by one or more people. Thus, they are outcomes of behavior or lagging indicators of safety.

To be most successful in preventing injuries, we recommend that you focus upstream when evaluating safety success. That is, although it is important to track incidents, you should also measure the potential for incidents to occur. This will allow your department or worksite to make adjustments prior to someone getting hurt or property

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Continue reading How You Can Be Proactive When it Comes to Injury Prevention

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Continue reading Using an Understanding of “Why People Do What They Do” to Promote Safety Improvements

Last month we described the importance of focusing your safety efforts upstream from the traditional measures of safety typically used to evaluate safety success in industry. The suggestion, from the perspective of behavior-based safety, was to create a system in which you can measure on-going safety-related behaviors. Moreover, it was recommended that you involve employees in the process of measurement by having them make peer-on-peer behavioral observations. This month, I’ll describe the common characteristics of a Critical Behavior Checklist that employees can use to make observations of one another, as well as the importance of each of these characteristics. I will also discuss the inherent benefits to safety at your facility of having employees regularly make behavioral observations. The Critical Behavior Checklist ...

Continue reading Pinpointing Behaviors and Designing an Observation Card: A First Step in Cultivating the Human Side of Safety