Leading Ideas Behavior-Based Safety

Are Nuclear Power Plants Too Safe?
Aubrey Daniels' Blog
...The danger I see for the nuclear power industry comes from overconfidence resulting from the high reliability of processes and equipment in the industry.  Therefore, the real danger may be more from human performance than nuclear radiation...

What to Do After an Accident
Aubrey Daniels' Blog
Dr. Judy Agnew examines what typically occurs in the aftermath of an accident and how management tends to react in very predictable ways, using negative consequences. Learn why having more proactive measures of safety will improve communications between workers and management and help to create a strong safety culture.

Safe By Accident: How to Use Discipline
Aubrey Daniels' Blog
Discipline is overused in most organizations because of a lack of understanding of human behavior. Watch as Dr. Judy Agnew describes the troubling side effects of discipline, why the message it usually sends is really "just don't get caught" and what an organization should do first instead.

Why Incentives and Safety Don't Mix!
Aubrey Daniels' Blog
Dr. Judy Agnew and Dr. Aubrey Daniels challenge commonly used safety incentives.  Who doesn’t like a good challenge or contest, right?  True, but safety incentives, by their very nature and design, are set up to reward an outcome that can come at any cost. Find out why, even with the best of intentions, organizations can put themselves at risk for unsafe behavior by using safety incentives.

Lagging Indicators: Don't Get Caught Focusing on the Wrong Safety Measures
Aubrey Daniels' Blog
Dr. Judy Agnew explains why a reactive approach to safety, such as relying on lagging indicators, fails to identify what can be done to prevent accidents in the first place, and what organizations should focus on instead.

Safe for What?
Aubrey Daniels' Blog
In this short video segment, Dr. Aubrey Daniels shares a broader discussion on safety in the workplace and the benefits of using a scientifically based approach to gather and track data. Learn how matrices can track several behaviors as they grow to habit strength and why safety is the gateway to production, quality, and cost.

Creating a Safe Physical Environment
Aubrey Daniels' Blog
The number one responsibility of Leadership in Safety is to create and maintain a safe physical environment. So why does safety sometimes fall short? This video describes the important role management plays in ensuring that an easy and effective process exists for reporting unsafe conditions and that hourly workers are comfortable making changes on their own.

Relationship Development in Safety
Aubrey Daniels' Blog
When it comes to safety, organizations need more than just compliance; they need people to follow the rules all the time, even when no one is watching. In this short video segment, Dr. Judy Agnew discusses why relationships are important and what it takes to build a strong safety culture...

Overreliance on Antecedents: Do Policies, Memos, and Safety Signage Work?
Aubrey Daniels' Blog
Safety signage, policies, memos and, yes, even training are considered antecedents.  They only prompt behavior. To effectively build a proactive and safe work environment, you must have effective consequences in place to drive consistently safe behavior.

Understanding At-Risk Behavior
Aubrey Daniels' Blog
Why do managers make poor decisions about safety? Dr. Judy Agnew says it is because they don’t understand why people engage in at-risk behavior.

Gambling with Safety
Aubrey Daniels' Blog
Dr. Judy Agnew, author of Safe By Accident?, discusses how by attempting to improve safety, companies institute safety programs, purchase specialized equipment, and engage in safety practices that they believe have a positive impact.

Safe By Accident: Eliminating the Rare Error
Aubrey Daniels' Blog
Dr. Daniels discusses how behavioral technology can detect the potential for rare errors and offers ways to insure that processes have integrity that is sustainable over the long haul.

Behavior-Based Safety in Healthcare
PM eZine
When you think of safety risks you might think of industries such as mining, oil and gas, or construction, but workers in healthcare also get hurt. Hospitals provide services that range from fairly routine to very complex treatments...

Removing Barriers to Achieving Exceptional Safety
PM eZine
Truly effective champions of behavior-based safety (BBS) play many important roles from attaining employee buy-in...

Safety in the News...Why we are still Safe By Accident
Aubrey Daniels' Blog
One of the biggest challenges in safety is getting people to do what they are supposed to do...

Behavior-Based Safety Leadership Avoid Being Safe by Accident
PM eZine
One of the biggest challenges in safety is getting people to do what they are supposed to do...

Injury-Based Incentives a Bad Idea for Promoting Workplace Safety
Metal Center News
Businesses often offer employees incentives to reward them for working safely. But such incentives can create problems, most notably the underreporting of accidents, and don't necessarily promote workplace safety...

Inspecting Our Way to Safer Food?
Aubrey Daniels' Blog
Inspections lead to penalties and punishment for those they find in violation. In an article I wrote for the Washington Post, I explain how penalties and punishment will NOT lead to safer food and offer some alternative approaches instead...

Why Relationships Matter in Safety
PM eZine
Have you ever noticed how supervisors who have good relationships with their crews tend to have safer crews?  In fact, good relationships tend to be associated with all kinds of good performance.  Why would this be so?

Misplaced Accountability for Accidents: Finding the cause but Not the Cure
PM eZine
Of course, in safety, accountability is essential, but the question is, does accountability always have to include negative consequences? In too many cases, accountability translates into disciplinary action against the frontline worker(s) directly tied to the accident (such as verbal and written warnings, suspension, and even termination)...

Is Safety Really Your Top Priority?
PM eZine
Ask almost any organization, particularly those tasked with producing something and you’ll find that not all employees agree. Management says the words “safety is number one” but the hourly population hears loud and clear that production is number one. Is this a communication problem? Not in the typical sense. Often the signs, slogans, statements and speeches communicate quite clearly that safety is number one. Unfortunately, management actions drown out the message.

BP was “Gambling with Safety”, are you?
Aubrey Daniels Blog
In a recent NY Times article the chairman of a government panel investigating the gulf rig explosion said that “time after time, BP appeared to have gambled with safety”.  While it is easy to vilify BP, they are not the only ones gambling with safety.  In our experience, many companies gamble with safety, albeit unknowingly.

Food Safety: Who is in Control? Would you believe nobody?
Aubrey Daniels Blog
With the recent outbreak of salmonella poisoning caused by egg contamination, it raises the debate yet again, “Who’s in Control of our food safety?”...

Creating a Culture of Safe Habits Begins with Identifying the Best Pinpoints: Hazard-driven Behavior Pinpointing in BBS
Aubrey Daniels Blog
There are many factors that can reduce the effectiveness of BBS systems, and they can pop up early in implementation or many years into the process. One of the key elements to an effective process is identifying sound behavior pinpoints...

Employees Have Spoken...Fear and Failed Leadership Prove Disastrous in Safety
Aubrey Daniels Blog
Results of a confidential survey completed by BP employees in the weeks before the rig exploded are unveiled. Most alarmingly, safety concerns of workers on the rig included: fear of reporting mistakes, observed unsafe behavior, unreliable and unsafe equipment and poor decision making.

Wanted: Safety Accountability
PM eZine
Devoted WV resident ignites a discussion on managements role in keeping mines safe.

Deadly Decisions: An Interview with Dwight Harshbarger, author of Witness at Hawks Nest
PM eZine
Written prior to the recent mining disaster at Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, this article, by behavioral safety specialist, Dr. Dwight Harshbarger, details how the past predicts the present, serving as a dire warning against complacency at worksites.

What is Behavior-Based Safety? A Look at the History and Its Connection To Science
PM eZine
There seems to be much confusion in the practice of behavior-based safety (BBS) that indicates to us, as safety consultants, a need for a common definition. Aubrey Daniels takes a look at the evolution of the technology.

Commercial Vehicle Safety: Onboard Safety Monitoring as Part of Behavioral Safety Management
PM eZine
Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) is the application of scientific behavior principles to modifying safety-related behaviors and reducing accidents and injuries. In the context of driving safely, this means changing drivers’ risky behaviors and styles, thereby reducing road risks, crashes, and traffic violations...

Driven to Distraction: Truckers Insist on Keeping Computers in the Cab
NY Times
Crisscrossing the country, hundreds of thousands of long-haul truckers use computers in their cabs to get directions and stay in close contact with dispatchers, saving precious minutes that might otherwise be spent at the side of the road...

Safety and the Science of Human Behavior

EHS Today
In an interview with EHS Today, leadership expert Dr. Aubrey C. Daniels discussed positive reinforcement, realistic safety goals, incentives and how the science of behavior can impact workplace safety...

What’s Behavior Got to do with Safety

OSHA Compliance Advisor Page 3

A Great Deal, Says Someone Who Ought to Know. If you use behavior-based safety (BBS), you likely know what the observation and feedback method of incident reduction is all about...

What’s Behavior Got to do with Safety

Safety Daily Advisor, Part 1

Behavior-based safety uses observation and feedback to reduce workplace accidents. Proponents say it’s a scientific way to identify at-risk behaviors and change them...

Reinforcing and Evaluating Behavior-based Safety

Safety Daily Advisor, Part 2

Consequences, both positive and negative, drive behavior. According to Agnew, “positive reinforcement is a desirable consequence that follows a behavior and increases its frequency in the future.” In a workplace context it exists in various forms...

FMC Mines with Safety
PM eZine
The people at FMC’s Green River facility produce and refine natural soda ash from ore so that we can have glass along with a number of other items such as detergents, paper, textiles, and baking soda. Green River’s managers have discovered an exciting and different way of empowering their workforce...

Stress & Safety: A Costly Relationship
PM eZine
This is the first of several articles offered by Aubrey Daniels International (ADI) to increase awareness of the high cost of stress in the workplace. During these times in particular, stress is being experienced everywhere and at every employment level. Managing stress at work is critical to business and employee success...

Texting While Driving Puts Spotlight on Behavior Based Safety
Aubrey Daniels' Blog
This graphic video on the dangers of texting and driving has been viewed more than 4 million times according to an article in The New York Times.

For The Record: Incentives and Safety

PM eZine
At a behavior-based safety conference, I heard speakers say warn of the danger of "dangling a carrot" in front of people as a means of getting them to act safety. The implication was that safe behavior generated this way was inferior to behavior generated by other means. The words and phrases, "gimmick" and "dangling a carrot," are emotionally laden and tend to convey a superficial approach and even sinister motive behind such attempts to get people to work safely. With all due respect to the experience of those who expressed such beliefs, the issue whether incentives, gimmicks, and carrots have a place in developing an effective safety culture is not a matter of anyone’s belief, it is an empirical matter.

Food Safety, Product Safety, and Public Protection: The Critical Role of Behavior
PM eZine
Food contamination problems as recent as salmonella-tainted peanuts from a Georgia plant have raised the public ire and questioned our confidence in corporations to insure food safety...

Optimizing Your BBS Investment
PM eZine
For decades businesses have approached workplace safety initiatives as separate from those operations that directly affect fiscal success. Such a view at least partially explains the management myopia of those who just don't seem to get it: BBS is a technology that addresses behaviors related to safety, but the same technology can easily transition to any other aspect of work that includes behavior.