Safety Tip - Behavior-Based Safety

Safety is a series of choices made by workers each day, choices involving behaviors in the workplace. It’s in how you train, what precautions you take when performing tasks, and your level of awareness to external factors that may jeopardize your wellbeing. You might say that ‘safety’ is in how you confront the sum total of different considerations with the potential for negatively impacting personal health.

There are three factors that influence personal safety choices: the ability to recognize hazards and evaluate risk, the motivation to be safe, and the ability to focus while performing the current task safely. 

Behavior Based Safety is a program designed to influence employee actions toward safer outcomes, ideally by preventing an accident or injury before it occurs. Implementing a behavior based safety program is the most comprehensive way for companies to promote safety, eliminate hazards and prevent injuries.

When implemented correctly, a behaviorbasedsafetyprogram can provide positive rewards to change unsafe behavior, reduce job-related injuries, minimize lost production hours, and improve workplace morale—essential ingredients for creating a strong safety culture. Behavior Based Safety matters because upwards of 80% of all accidents occur due to the choices we make and how we act—that is, our behavior. Safety is to a great extent under our own control. Unsafe acts, rather than unsafe conditions, are the root cause of most incidents.

The purpose of this lesson is to introduce behavior-based safety concepts to employees, with the intent of creating an understanding what influences employees to change unsafe behaviors before an accident or injury happens. Accidents and injuries have both a human and business cost, so it is advantageous for employees to practice safe behaviors and mitigate unsafe behaviors in the workplace.