BEHAVIOR BASED SAFETY

Behavior Based Safety



Behavior Based Safety

Introduction

During the past few years, the application of Behavior Based safety has become a crucial weapon for employees and employers in order to take preventive measures for workplace injuries. According to a research conducted by the Dupont Company, behaviors are considered to be the most effective preventive measure for injuries in the workplace. The basic elements, which lay the underlying foundation of Behavior Based Safety, are critical because:

The recent Behavior Based safety programs are based on them

True Behavior Based Safety approach should be distinguished from other approaches of achieving sustainable success (Hahn, 2006).

Precisely, the main idea behind Behavior based Safety is establishing such programs, which focus entirely on the consistently changing behaviors of the workers, in order to prevent the illnesses and injuries in the workplace. The programs are based on the fallacious notion that injuries and illnesses at workplace occur as a result of careless and unsafe acts of the workers. The idea of behavior based safety is popular because it brings a significant change in the organization, from the perspective of shifting the responsibility of workplace health and safety to workers, not requiring the management to make major changes in the processes or systems in accordance to the occupational health and safety standards.

Moreover, the companies who offer Behavior Based Safety programs assert that these programs can reduce the number of workdays which are lost as a result of employee illness or injury. Supporters of Behavior Based Safety programs also claims that these programs are cheaper and inexpensive as compared to re-vamping the entire system according to the occupational health and safety requirement, and management can also encourage workers to identify the hazards which are associated with a job role. However, this claim of proponents does not consider the training costs ...