Behavioral Safety

Employers identifying and understanding behavioral safety, and all its associated components, will provide a safe working environment for their employees and play an important role in eliminating workplace accidents.

Defining Behavioral Safety

• Every employee should be vigilant.

  According to "Hazards Magazine," behavioral safety is an approach to workplace safety that focuses on workers' behavior as the cause of most work-related injuries and illnesses. In a nutshell, employers and Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) officers examine the root causes of work-related accidents and illnesses to see if a worker's behavior contributed to them.

How it Works

• Normally in situations that involve hazards for workers, engineering controls such as machine guards, ventilation systems and personal protective equipment (PPE) are used to ensure workers' safety. In the behavior-based system, workers are educated, trained in an alternative method or in some cases terminated to ensure their safety and that of others.

Good and Bad Behavior

• Observation, a key component in behavior safety.

  Almost anything an individual does can be attributed to behavior. If a worker gets plenty of rest, he will be more alert. If he doesn't arrive rested, this could promote carelessness; he will endanger not only himself but other workers as well. The latter could be identified as bad behavior. Good behavior can be identified as habitually following the rules.