"Behavior based safety" is a term used for programs focused on changing the behavior of workers in order to prevent occupational injuries and illnesses. By blaming workers for their injuries and illnesses, these programs rely on the belief that most workplace safety and health problems are the result of "unsafe acts."
Behavior based programs target specific worker behaviors, enlist hourly employees and management in monitoring these behaviors on the shop floor and use a check-list to document workers? actions.
Depending on the program, such "observations" may be followed up with positive reinforcement (complimentary evaluations, prizes, rewards) or discipline (not necessarily overt).
http://www.ufcw.org/workplace_connections/retail/safety_health_news_and_facts/behavior_based.cfm
For some years now, industry leaders have been committed to continuous improvement in productivity and quality. In the mid-1980s, this same commitment began to emerge concerning safety performance.
Since everyone in the workplace has an immediate interest in safety, this development was quite natural. Such natural interest in safety is important because employee involvement is central to any continuous safety improvement effort.
Training may be more crucial to success in safety than in either quality or productivity. The reason is that by the time the work force learns and internalizes the behaviors that lead to continuous improvement, they have had to come to terms with the nature of the learning cycle itself.
When it comes to occupational safety, the human learning cycle is plagued by a paradox that sets people up for injury. That paradox is this: Individual experience does not match group risk.
This means that even in the case of a critical at-risk behavior, an individual may perform it thousands of times with no ill effect - the outcome is unpredictable. However, when hundreds of workers each perform that at-risk behavior thousands of times, there is no unpredictability about the outcome - someone is going to........
