FUNDAMENTAL 55: Behavior-Based Safety

Key Takeaways:

– Understanding behavior-based safety and its key terms
– Learning why a behavior-based safety program matters to both employees and companies
– Recognizing methods and tools to eliminate hazards and prevent injuries on the job
– Learning the steps involved in a behavior-based safety program

Course Description

It is apparent that accidents and injuries have both a human and a business cost, therefore it is beneficial for everyone if employees practice safe behaviors and mitigate unsafe behaviors in the workplace. The objective of this lesson is to introduce behavior-based safety concepts to employees and create awareness around what influences employees to change unsafe behaviors before an accident or injury happens.

Unsafe behaviors are often obvious when you try to think of them. There’s the classic running with scissors, but for most workplaces, unsafe behaviors are often convenient ones. Safety can take extra steps or effort, and it therefore slows down processes. Unfortunately, that sluggishness is critical to the workplace. Cutting corners does save time, but often it cuts safety out as well. This opens up the risks for injuries and fatalities in the workplace, neither of which anyone wants to happen to them. We can all think about some examples of unsafe behaviors in our workplaces. Maybe that means throwing oily rags in regular trash cans, not checking machine guards before operating, not doing a 360 check before backing up a vehicle, or not checking that a machine is secured in place. Perhaps it means not wearing PPE or using duct tape to fix a significant leak.

It’s important to change unsafe behavior, and often a behavior-based safety program is the easiest way to do that. Through this course, you will learn different ways to correct both your and others’ behavior.