Behavior-based safety (BBS) is a school of thought that provides employers with a process and tool to positively alter unsafe attitudes and behaviors, and promote safe behaviors.
Employees will become aware of their actions, allowing them to prevent or reduce business and health losses. Not only is BBS important in the workplace, but it can also be used in the everyday world at home or at play.
It is hard to discern when the BBS field was established and became what it is today. In the 1970s, a company worked on open pit mining in Utah where it showed that, with the use of a token economy (a system based on the reinforcement of target behavior), improvement of safety results can be maintained for over 12 years.
To have a successful BBS program, all employees must buy into loss prevention. To achieve changes in behavior, a change in policy, procedures and/or systems most assuredly require employee behavior changes. Those changes cannot be made without buy-in and support from all involved in making those decisions. Therefore, when losses are addressed in a proactive manner, companies find that their safety culture will prosper.
What does loss prevention mean? Loss prevention refers to measures taken to prevent the loss of life, injuries and property damage. In the workplace, this involves preventing accidents, reducing risks and controlling the known hazards. The goal of loss prevention is to bring the organization's accidents as close to zero as possible. A thorough BBS program helps develop safe work environments by managing better employee habits, a vibrant safety culture and an attitude toward safety, first and foremost.
In high-risk industries, a BBS with promotion of loss-prevention activities involves the identification and assessment of probable accidents and related losses. Some of the elements in implementing an effective program include:
- Standards for behavior and performance: The vision, purpose and priorities which are communicated to everyone involved
- Resources: Physical resources include the tools, equipment, money and facilities needed for implementing a BBS system; psychosocial resources include time and training
- System of measurement: Ensure that behavioral observations are measurable by creating standards that can be evaluated and used to provide objective feedback
- Effective consequences: This can increase favorable behaviors in the form of positive reinforcements
- Appropriate application: The program needs to be fair, giving recognition and reward when required
- Continuous program assessment: Assessment will determine whether the program is effective and allows for continual progress To promote and encourage safe employee behavior, the companies should do the following:
- Involve employees in the identification and correction of hazards
- Periodically audit operations
- Perform safety observations to encourage safe behaviors, ideally peer-to-peer observations
- Give recognition to employees who perform tasks safely and demonstrate proper behaviors
- Make sure that appropriate controls are in place and operational
- Investigate every incident for root causes, communicate findings and correct deficiencies. The findings and corrections should be communicated to everyone
BBS is the application of the science of applied behavior analysis to issues of safety in the workplace. The issues include all employees from the front-line to the board room and involve architecture, equipment, management systems, work processes and management, as well as employee behavior. Observing human behavior, providing feedback, modifying behavior in a healthy way and sustaining those modifications in one's behavior helps in creating safe individuals and environments. With all the components and tools working together, a vibrant BBS program will greatly reduce loss of life, injuries and property damage and help achieve the goal of zero incidents. This is exemplified by IKON's safety performance since 2009, and the 2022 achievement of its Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) of 0.00 with 121,707 field hours worked.
For more information, visit ikonenviro.com or call (281)766-IKON.
