The behaviour-based approach to safety

Responsible organisations have made substantial efforts to ensure that facilities and equipment are designed for safe operation. and that appropriate safety management systems are in place. These efforts have led to significant improvements in safety but, all too often, employees are still having accidents and the improvements have plateaued out. To achieve continuous improvement, leading organisations have adopted many of the ideas of quality management, namely an upstream process measurement system, adjustments on the basis of statistical data, and employee involvement and participation across organisational levels. The resulting behaviour-based approach to safety focuses on employees themselves identifying the critical behaviours that lead to accidents, measuring the incidence of at-risk behaviours. providing immediate feedback, and using data to remove barriers to safe work. But each organisation is different; how should a behaviour-based safety process be adapted to its specific needs? Therefore it is important to start with a safety climate assessment to identify the key factors to be considered, as well as providing a valuable baseline against which to measure the subsequent sustained improvement in safety. The Carrington site of Montell UK has implemented behaviour-based safety and provides a good case study of its effectiveness.