Organizations spend millions on safety systems, equipment, and programs. But if they aren’t addressing the human element through behavior based safety training and cultural transformation, they’ll always be leaving their organization vulnerable.
Behavior and habit are invariably at the root of every workplace incident. Proactively shaping employee practices, mindsets, observations, and habits through positive reinforcement should be the foundation of any safety initiative that hopes to drive down injury rates and build a culture of operational excellence.
It takes immense work – but that effort pales in comparison to the human toll inflicted by serious workplace injuries. Make no mistake, human behaviors and ingrained habits don’t change overnight.
There is always a lesson for the organizations, they can have all the engineering controls, protective equipment, and protocols but they’ll never be enough on their own. At the end of the day, workplace safety comes down to human behavior.
What Is The Goal of Behavior Based Safety Training?
Organizations invest in safety systems, technologies, and physical controls to minimize hazards. Layers of protection through safety rails, machine guards, ventilation, PPE, etc can go a long way.
But here’s the inescapable fact – humans are unpredictable. People get complacent. They take shortcuts. They make mistakes. Even with all the right systems in place, it only takes one worker failing to follow procedures to trigger an incident.
Creating a safety program focused solely on establishing policies, rules, and equipment is treating the workforce like programmable robots. But that’s not how people operate in the real world.
Organizations have to recognize that people are complex beings driven as much by habit, mindset, and embedded behaviors as they are by policies and procedures. Changing those ingrained human behaviors and habits takes a fundamentally different approach.
That’s where proactive behavioral safety training comes in. The goal is to foster a true safety culture and instill the right practices in each worker through awareness, coaching, feedback, and positive reinforcement. It’s preventative rather than reactive.
Five Key Elements Of Behavior-Based Safety Training
1. Participation and Observation
It starts with the workforce itself. Employees need to be direct participants in the safety process through peer observations, audits, inspections, etc. They can’t be passive bystanders, but instead should be trained to look out for unsafe acts and behaviors.
2. Data Gathering
Those observations and audits aren’t just for their own sake. The data needs to be rigorously gathered to establish baselines, identify at-risk practices and behaviors, and track improvements over time. It becomes a leading indicator to proactively address issues.
3. Feedback and Coaching
The observational data is meaningless if we don’t act on it. That means providing caring, respectful feedback at the moment, both to recognize safe practices and to coach at-risk behaviors. It’s about shaping habits through positive reinforcement.
4. Tracking and Incentives
Tracking individual and group improvements over time allows us to identify high achievers and provide recognition. Incentives and rewards for safe behaviors, rather than just lagging metrics like zero incidents, can be highly motivating.
5. Managerial Involvement
All of this falls apart without managerial commitment and participation. Supervisors and leaders have to be in the trenches, not office-bound, shaping the culture through their actions. Making safety a genuine management priority is key.
The Benefits of Behavior-Based Training
When organizations commit to a behavior-focused training program, the benefits extend far beyond just minimizing incidents. We’re talking about a fundamental remaking of the safety culture. Some key advantages include:
Heightened Awareness
With employees participating in observations, coaching, and feedback, safety awareness moves from an abstract concept to a daily practice. It becomes ingrained in people’s minds.
Leading Indicators
Tracking behaviors and practices provides priceless leading indicators to predict and prevent issues before they result in injuries, rather than just reacting to lagging incident rates.
Cultural Shift
When organizations get managers, workers, and a peer-to-peer feedback cycle all aligned on shaping safety behavior, they develop a culture of accountability and personal responsibility.
Worker Engagement
Participation, observation, and coaching get people directly involved rather than being passive rule-followers. That builds a greater sense of engagement and ownership of the safety program.
Real Habit Changes
Rules, procedures, and policies only go so far. Behavior-based safety is about driving changes to people’s daily habits and instinctual practices through awareness and positive reinforcement.
Some Cautions and Realities
Implementing a sound behavior-based safety program is an immense undertaking that requires commitment at all levels of an organization. It also needs to be executed thoughtfully and with an understanding of potential pitfalls:
Bringing in the Experts For Behavior-based Safety Training
Fundamentally transforming a workplace culture through behavior-based safety is no simple task. That’s why many organizations turn to specialized consultants and training firms to help guide them through the process.
Experienced professionals can coach not just workers, but also managers and leadership on the right strategies and practices to foster real cultural change. They take organizations step-by-step through building observation programs, data tracking methods, coaching processes, and more.
Outside expertise, paired with a real organizational commitment over the long haul, can be a powerful combination to embed a behavior-based mindset that sticks.
Final Thoughts
Behavior-based safety training is Not a Quick Fix. Changing mindsets and ingrained behaviors takes time. There’s no shortcut to creating a true culture of safety and converting it into habit. Organizations need sustained training and coaching has to come from the right time and right place. They must keep engineering controls in place, keep policies and protocols up to date, and keep investing in protective equipment. But couple it with an equally rigorous commitment to reshaping the human dimension through behavior-focused training. It’s the foundation upon which truly effective workplace safety initiatives are built. Organizations that invest in culture-changing, behavior-focused training will see awareness heightened, accountability strengthened, and habits improved across the board.
