Importance of Behavior Based Safety – Behavior based safety relies on complete trust and cooperation between the leaders and employees. Behavior based safety is important because it provides long-term solutions for eliminating risks and hazards. This life saving approach fosters a culture of safety in the workplace which is vital for lasting success.

Why is behavioral safety important?

Why is behavior based safety important? – The importance of a behavior based safety program lies in its pragmatic approach to remove the most common source of workplace injuries or accidents – “human error”. While human error is non-deliberate, it emancipates from our casual behavioral tendency of being complacent while undertaking high-risk jobs,

Front line workers are often prone to human errors as they tend to neglect the finer aspects of safety while following routine operations. As experience manifest in faster results, these workers tend to take risky shortcuts that go undetected. This change in behavior influences a dangerous pattern that ultimately leads to an accident – causing harm to themselves and those around them.

With a BBS program, your entire organization from the management to frontline workers is constantly under observation to discover unsafe or destructive behavioral tendencies. A comprehensive BBSO program observes employees while they perform routine tasks, providing them with continuous feedback, motivation and awareness to reinforce their behavior to align with safe work practices.

What are the benefits of behavior-based safety programs?

Companies can achieve their goals by applying this effective tool. – By Alexandra Walsh There were more than 5000 fatal work injuries and nearly 3 million nonfatal workplace injuries in 2017. The surface causes of these incidents are usually obvious—but will not typically stop the incident from happening again.

1. The best way to prevent an incident from repeating itself is to incorporate behavior-based safety (BBS), which examines the overall safety of the workplace.
2. Its aim is to focus attention on the everyday behaviors of the workers.
3. BBS works to determine the root causes of unsafe behaviors and the best route to improve them.

Safety managers are always looking for ways to reduce risk, take preventive action against potential hazards and incidents, and improve their company’s overall safety culture. BBS is an effective tool to achieve all these goals.

Why is safety behaviour important in the workplace?

2. What is BS and does BS work? – Behavioural Safety is an approach to workplace safety that focuses on workers’ behaviour as the cause of most work-related injuries and illnesses. Consultants who sell behaviour-based safety programs maintain that 80 – 96% of workplace injuries are caused by workers’ unsafe behaviours.

• Trade Union health and safety activists in the U.S.
• Traced the origin of these statistics to “research” conducted by an insurance investigator named H.W.
• Heinrich in the 1930’s in the United States.
• Heinrich’s research consisted of reviewing supervisors’ accident reports and making conclusions about accident causation from those reports.

In the 1930’s, not unlike today, supervisors’ accident reports blame workers for the accident. Heinrich concluded that 88% of all workplace accidents were caused by workers’ unsafe acts. A behaviour-based safety approach focuses on ways to identify workers who are behaving “unsafely” and coax, cajole and/or threaten them into behaving safely on the job.

1. A variety of consultants market behaviour-based safety programmes.
2. Among the consultants marketing these programs internationally are DuPont (the DuPont STOP program) and Behavioural Science Technologies (also known as BST).
3. While there are some differences between the different brands of behaviour-based programs, most have several common elements.

Lists of “critical worker behaviours” are developed, often with input from workers themselves who are invited and welcomed into the process. Inevitably these lists end up with elements such as “staying out of the line of fire,” “proper body position,” and “using personal protective equipment.” Workers (and/or supervisors) are trained to observe workers doing their jobs and, using the “critical behaviour list” generated in that workplace, noting down when workers are using safe behaviours or committing unsafe acts.

• There is training for those who will be observing, and frequent observations of workers.
• There is often management commitment of substantial resources to promote the behavioural safety approach.
• Several very problematic things happen in workplaces that have adopted behavioural safety.
• The “hierarchy of controls” is abandoned.

This is a system of addressing workplace health and safety problems established an order of preference for hazard control measures:

• eliminate the hazard by redesign, toxic use reduction or other means;
• use engineering controls to prevent workers from coming in contact with the hazard;
• use warnings to notify workers of the danger (e.g. back-up alarms on trucks);
• training and procedures; and
• use of personal protective equipment.

Eliminating hazards is seen as the most effective way of addressing an occupational safety and health problem; personal protective equipment is viewed as the least effective method. When behavioural safety approaches are being used, “staying out of the line of fire” replaces effective equipment safeguarding and design; “proper body position” replaces good ergonomics programs and ergonomically-designed tools, workstations and jobs; and “personal protective equipment” becomes a substitute for noise control, chemical enclosures, ventilation and toxic use reduction.

• Instead of having a focus on identifying hazards and eliminating or reducing them, the emphasis of the safety program is on getting workers to work more carefully around hazards that shouldn’t be there in the first place.
• Workers are supposed to duck, dodge, jump out of the way, lift safely, wear personal protective equipment, avoid the line of fire, and keep their eyes on the task.

When a worker is injured, it is viewed as his or her fault for not working carefully enough. Discipline can then become management’s preferred response to worker injury. Even in cases where a behavioural safety program is implemented with assurances that there will be no discipline, there are several problems.

1. Workers still often suffer inquisitions when they report injuries to determine what “unsafe behaviours” they were engaging in.
2. And, the emphasis for corrective action remains on promoting safe worker behaviour rather than eliminating or reducing hazards.
3. Fear and intimidation descend upon a workplace with a behaviour-based safety program in place.

Workers avoid inquisitions into their behaviour by ceasing to report accidents and injuries. When injuries aren’t reported, hazards don’t get identified or corrected. Closely related to a behavioural safety approach are two programs employers frequently introduce with or without a full-blown behaviour-based safety program: safety incentive programs and injury discipline policies.

• Safety incentive programs offer prizes to workers or groups of workers when no injuries are reported.
• Prizes can range from jackets and mugs to gift certificates to free lunches, cash, days off with pay, or trucks.
• Injury discipline policies deliver discipline or some adverse consequence such as automatic drug testing when workers report injuries.

An injury discipline program popular in the United States is the “Accident Repeaters Program,” which identifies workers who have had a certain number of injuries (usually one or two in a 12 or 24 month period) and place them in a program whereby they will get counselling if they report another injury; receive a written warning for their next injury; suspension for the next injury; and termination should they report another injury after that.

Another injury discipline program popular in the United States assigns a point system to injuries reported and/or workers compensation claims filed. An injury requiring only medical care and no days away from work is assigned one point; a lost-time accident is worth five points. When a worker reaches thirty points, he or she is fired.

One result of full-blown behavioural safety programs as well as safety incentive and injury discipline policies is that workers don’t report their injuries. They may not get the medical care they need as a result, and again, hazards causing those injuries don’t get identified or corrected.

In a Massachusetts workplace last year, a worker was caught in an unguarded machine and crushed to death. Minor injuries that had occurred on that machine weren’t being reported because the plant utilized both a safety bingo game that rewarded workers for not reporting injuries and a post-injury drug testing policy that mandated drug testing for all workers who reported injuries.

If those minor injuries had been reported, the lack of machine guarding could have been identified and corrected. Instead, the hazard was never identified, and a fatality resulted. Safety programmes and policies that discourage the reporting of work-related injuries and illnesses are hazards in and of themselves; they can, in fact, be deadly.

Another very problematic consequence of behaviour-based safety programs and safety incentive programs with group prizes has to do with the destruction of solidarity among a workforce. In safety incentive games where everyone in a department or workplace gets a prize as long as no one reports an injury, workers put pressure on co-workers to not report their injuries.

In the case of behaviour-based safety programmes complete with “critical behaviour” checklists and worker observations, those doing the observing get time off the job and special status; those being observed feel scrutinized by co-workers. There are sometimes one or more behaviour-based safety coordinators that the union is allowed to appoint, who work full-time on the safety program.

1. They enjoy their office space, their access to management, trips to conferences and other perks, and become invested in the programme.
2. Sometimes management will address a problem in the context of a behaviour-based programme that they were not addressing when the union was pushing for a solution.
3. This serves to undermine the union.

All of these situations can lead to a divided workforce, with some members supporting the programme and others opposing it. A main source of union power is our solidarity. Anything that messes with solidarity messes with the strength and power of a union.

1. Behaviour-based safety programs can pit worker against worker, decrease solidarity and weaken union power.
2. Finally, it’s not called behavioural safety for nothing.
3. Safety is the prime concern, as opposed to health.
4. In the US, employers grappling with the cost of workers’ compensation are much more concerned about industrial accidents than occupational disease, because approximately 95% of workers compensation cases are for job-related injuries as opposed to illnesses.

Employers have other ways of dealing with occupational disease (e.g. implicating “life-style” and genetic factors rather than workplace exposure) and don’t feel they need a whole corporate program to deal with it. Do behavioural safety programmes “work”? That depends on who is being asked, and what is meant by “work”.

1. Employers like behaviour-based safety for many reasons.
2. When injury reporting is driven underground, several things happen that benefit employers.
3. There is a decrease in the filing of workers compensation claims.
4. This can save employers a lot of money.
5. In addition, employers can escape government inspections.

In the US, OSHA (our WorkSafe Victoria) collects employer’s injury and illness records annually, identifies employers with high rates of injuries and illnesses and from this data makes a targeting list for surprise inspections. Employers can minimize the chances of an OSHA inspection if they have fewer injuries and illnesses showing up on their reports.

• Instituting a behaviour-based safety programme and/or safety incentive programmes and injury discipline policies results in fewer reported injuries and illnesses after these programs are introduced.
• Employers and consultants who sell these programs tout wonderful statistics showing often dramatic declines in workplace injuries and illnesses.

This is used to “prove” that these programmes “work.” Employers also like behaviour-based approaches because management is taken off the hook for fixing hazards. Gone are demands for engineering control, toxic use reduction, and ergonomic job design, as attention shifts to workers wearing personal protective equipment and using proper body position.

1. Gone is any focus on how work is organized or being restructured – issues like adequate staffing levels, limits on extended work hours, humane work load and work pace are not even considered.
2. As an added bonus, employers enjoy the assault on solidarity created by behavioural safety programmes.
3. Union power is weakened, to the delight of management.

Behaviour-based safety is truly a win-win-win proposition for employers. For workers and unions, the opposite is true. Behaviour-based safety programs focus attention away from hazardous workplace conditions and thwart hazard identification and control efforts, with harmful and tragic results.

What is the behavior-based approach to safety?

Behavior-Based Safety is a program used to inform employees of their overall safety performance. It was founded on the belief that workers can be motivated to behave safely through the use of positive reinforcement. BBS focuses on the actions and behaviors of individual employees. It puts the responsibility of safety on the shoulders of all employees, rather than just management alone.

What is the behavior goal for bip?

The three areas where goals may be developed to support a BIP are: Required: Use of an identified functionally equivalent replacement behavior. Recommended: Decrease in challenging behavior. Recommended: Increase in general positive behavior.

Why is a positive safety culture important?

WHY WORK TOWARDS A POSITIVE SAFETY CULTURE? – A positive safety culture is vital when implementing, maintaining and improving an organisation’s health and safety management system. To exist in a negative safety culture can create social, psychological and physical issues and deteriorate employee wellbeing and health.

Increased incidents and injuries in the workplace Employees feel unsafe in their environments and do not feel comfortable reporting safety concerns Work demand is perceived as a higher importance than safety Lack of teamwork, collaboration, and commitment to safety systems

A positive safety culture requires personal investment from every individual within the organisation. A pro-active approach to health and safety must be taken to create an environment where social dialogue and participation in the development, compliance and continuous improvement of safety systems are encouraged.

What is Behavioural safety checklist?

Conclusion – If you want to enforce safety in your workplace, you need to be proactive. By taking the time to understand and create a behavior-based safety strategy for your company, you can identify the unsafe behaviors that you want to address. Then, by creating a behavioral safety checklist using and implementing it in your workplace, you can make a real difference in how your employees think about safety.

What is an example of safe behaviour at the workplace?

Effective Safety Tips for Managers and Employees – As previously mentioned, both employees and managers are responsible for the safety of their working environment. While it’s the employer’s responsibility to provide the necessary safety training and equipment, employees must also do their part and abide by certain rules to protect themselves and their colleagues from injuries, illness, or other accidents.

Assign safety tasks to their staff and take feasible precautions that will protect their workers from injury and illness. Ensure timely maintenance of equipment and a clean working environment. Regularly communicate with their workers about occupational safety hazards, OSHA regulations, and other ways of improving safety in the workplace. Regularly training employees and providing the necessary material to inform the staff about potential hazards. Offer complete supervision to ensure all equipment is used safely and that safety gear is used whenever it’s needed.

When it comes to the employees, they need to:

Always wear protective equipment when working around potential job hazards. Keep their workstations clean and put away their equipment in its designated locations. Follow a safety checklist and ensure that all safety protocols have been performed for every critical task. Not be afraid to ask questions, if needed, about certain safety procedures. Request safety training and resources in order to increase workplace safety.

What are the goals and objectives of a bip?

Functions of Behavior – All behavior occurs because the individual gets something out of it (gets something good or escapes something bad). In Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), the reason a behavior continues is called the function of that behavior. These functions serve as reinforcers for the learner.

If the behavior no longer works for that purpose, the behavior will stop and a new behavior will take its place. Identifying the function of the behavior is critical in developing an effective BIP. The goal of the BIP is always to teach the learner adaptive ways to access the reinforcer maintaining the target behavior and may also include a plan for teaching the learner to tolerate when that reinforcer is not available.

To meet this goal, you must accurately identify the specific functions maintaining the behavior. The functions of behavior are discussed in depth in our post Functions of Behavior in ABA: Complete Guide,

What are the 4 goals of Behaviour?

Answer – It is really important for us to understand more about the iceberg and the purpose and goal of misbehavior. Figure 1 shows an iceberg analogy. Dreikurs and Adler pointed out that children make decisions based on their perceptions or their private logic from a very early age. Figure 1. The iceberg analogy, from www.positivediscipline.com. On the other hand, when they do not, you often see challenging behaviors at the tip of the iceberg. We want children to thrive. When children do not feel a sense of belonging, they adopt survival behaviors or misbehaviors, what we see as the tip of the iceberg challenging behavior.

What is behavior based goal examples?

Be on your best behavior – Communication, time management, and conflict resolution are all examples of behavioral goals that improve every aspect of your workflow — including those more easily trackable outcome goals. While noting progress might seem more ambiguous with behavioral goals, change will start from within and extend to every interaction and task you take on. Published May 1, 2023

What are the benefits of behaviour plans?

A good PBS plan has more proactive strategies than reactive ones. This helps to ensure that the focus of the plan is not just on the challenging behaviour but provides ways to support the person to have a good life, enabling them to learn new skills and more effective ways of getting what they need and want.

What are the benefits of behavior skills training?

Benefits of behavior skills training – Children with autism often struggle with social, communication, and self-help skills. BST has been shown to be particularly effective in helping these children learn new skills and improve their functioning. One study found that using BST to teach social skills to children with autism led to significant improvements in their ability to initiate interactions, respond appropriately to others, and maintain conversations.

1. In addition, BST can help children with autism improve their ability to regulate their own behavior.
2. Children with autism may engage in repetitive or self-injurious behaviors as a way of coping with stress or anxiety.
3. By teaching them alternative behaviors through BST, therapists can help these children better manage their emotions and reduce problematic behaviors.

Another benefit of using BST in ABA therapy for children with autism is that it can be tailored to the unique needs and abilities of each child. Children with autism vary widely in their strengths and weaknesses, so it is important to use an individualized approach when teaching new skills.

By breaking down complex skills into smaller, manageable steps and providing feedback and reinforcement at each stage, therapists can help children make steady progress towards their goals. Overall, the benefits of using BST in ABA therapy for children with autism are clear. It is a highly effective method for teaching new skills, improving behavior, and promoting generalization and maintenance of those skills over time.

As such, it should be a key component of any comprehensive treatment plan for children with autism.

What is one of the key elements of an effective behavioral based safety program?

Importance of Behavior Based Safety – Behavior-based safety relies on good cooperation and trust between leaders and their subordinates. This program is important because it provides long-term behavior changes resulting in a safer workplace. At the same time, it also provides solutions for eliminating hazards and risks.

Jack Gloop