Fifteen years of experience helping businesses transform their work cultures have shown me that Evidence-Based Practices around key business needs are essential. Evidence-Based Practices are simply those that allow for objective measurement of performance that should lead to a desired outcome. For example, in the Behavior-Based Safety process that we teach, safety behaviors are measured through direct observation. Then, performance feedback is provided immediately to the individual(s) observed as a means of reinforcing desired behavior and stopping undesired behavior. We stress giving positive feedback for safe performance. And, if correction is needed, we teach a constructive feedback process that allows the performer to share with the observer all factors that may have contributed to the ...

Continue reading Evidence-Based Practices: How to Create Conversations that Lead to Beneficial Culture Change

The Center for Behavioral Safety is well aware of difficulties the current economy is creating for many of the industries with whom we've been fortunate to work.  The net result to many businesses is trying to do more with less, including fewer personnel resources.   When combined with increased individual stress because of job insecurity or personal financial troubles, many employees are at a greater risk for injury now than at any time in recent past.

Although we don't consider investments in safety to be discretionary, many companies have cut their budgets for safety in light of economic difficulties.  Yet, safety is a hallmark of good business and quality performance.  Our experience suggests that an investment in safety, with a focus on behavior,

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Continue reading We Want to Help: Receive Discounted Rates on All Services!

Recently, I have found myself doing many more sessions on the benefits of behavior pinpointing to increase the success of safety programs. This has been due, in part, as a response to some powerful industry safety leaders who have mistakenly equated measurement with behavior-based safety.

Continue reading Does Your Behavior-Based Safety Process Make the Grade?

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