Implementing behavior-based safety or a program to reduce accidents

Safety in the workplace should always be a high priority. Having accidents on the job can lead to a loss in productivity and can cost the company a lot of money. It can also have an effect on how your employees perform their work. If they do not feel as if they are in a safe environment, they will not perform to their best potential.

Behavior based safety or BBS, is a program that focus' on how a company can change it organizational behavior. It must include the whole company, from the CEO and management to all other employees. You will not be able to implement this program without all the factors. When you are creating your safety program, everyone must be involved in the decision making. You cannot have one without the other. Behavior based safety is not based on how a personal if feeling or on their opinions, but is based on scientific knowledge on how a job runs. When implementing a program you need to have the following in order to make the safety program work correctly.

Set common goals. Management as a whole needs to set a goal that they can all reach and then you need to have each employee set a personal goal that will help improve themselves and the company. When you set your goals make sure you have target goals set. These are goals that you will strive to meet, but in the process may find that you need to take a different approach. Set goals that you and your employees know you can reach.In setting goals that are reachable you will see safety by each employee improve. Make your goals small so you can achieve them over and over again. Once you have reached your small goal a couple times, set a new goal to go with the one you have already achieved and strive to meet them both.

When you use a behavior based safety program you must make sure that attitudes are adjusted also. It has been proven that behavior influences attitude and attitude influences behavior. When you have positive attitudes, you see good positive results. If you don't see a change in behavior, you may have a deeper issue you need to work with. Be sure to keep communication open between your employees. This will help them to trust you as well as you to trust them.

Since you are going to observe your employees and criticize their behaviors, they may not perform their job duties the same way they normally do when you are not around. To find out why some of the accidents are happening, assign "shadow" monitors. These individuals will watch the way other employees perform their jobs and report back to you. This is a great way to gain a true analysis of your employee's performance.

There are several companies that offer behavior based safety programs and they will come in and train your employees to properly operate the machinery. The companies that provide behavior-based training will talk to each of your employees about some of the things they do that cause workplace accidents to occur. They will also go through all of your equipment to see if there are problems with the machines. Broken equipment leads to workplace accidents. Every time an employee is injured and they file with workers compensation, your monthly insurance rates will increase. To save money on workers compensation, your only choice is to implement a behavior-based safety program to reduce workplace accidents. Depending upon the size of your organization, the cost averages anywhere form $1,000 per employee to $50,000 for a company contract.