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A Brief History of Behavior Based Safety
In 1517, a German priest named Martin Luther wrote a tract called the 95 theses criticizing the Christian clergy for selling indulgences and nailed the document to the door of a church in Wittenberg, igniting centuries of warfare and sectarian violence.
Behavior Based Safety isn’t exactly the Protestant Reformation, but within the realm of workplace safety, it’s the next best thing. Ironically enough, the Martin Luther of the movement that would stir up so much passion and emotion in the breasts of safety professionals was a bureaucrat who worked for an insurance company. In 1931, after reading thousands of industrial accident reports, Herbert William Heinrich of the Traveler’s Insurance Company concluded that 88% of all accidents, injuries and illnesses are caused by worker errors.
Heinrich’s work was the 95 theses of safety and it spurred a movement. If human error was the real cause of accidents, the key to safety was to observe workers, identify what they were doing wrong and change their behavior.
It was at roughly this time that the American psychologist, B.F. Skinner was conducting experiments in the malleability of human behavior. Skinner’s work helped spur the formation of scientific methods of studying and improving human behavior. These behavioral methods were applied to industrial accident prevention. The consultant Dr. E. Scott Geller is credited with coining the term “Behavior Based Safety” in 1979.
Like a religious sect, BBS has both its true believers and passionate critics, among them, Dan Petersen. The principle criticism of BBS is that it’s too one-dimensional. The anti-BBS view, which Wayne clearly shares, is that human behavior is just one of the causes of accidents and that multi-faceted programs are the key to safety.
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I think occupational safety, like most situations in life, is multi-faceted. While I'm a believer that one must look hard at the behaviors involved in any injury or accident, I feel a professional would be doing a disservice to the injured employee, to their organization, and to the ultimate cause- which is to create a workplace that focuses on all encompassing health and safety- if they did not look at the "big picture". Approaching anything in life with a pre-determined mindset that you will only be looking at one aspect will surely set you up to miss something along the way. The first organization I worked for in the health and safety arena was very focused on behavioral based safety. As I have moved on in my career, I value the tools I gained from that large corporation but have grown to see that until you go into a situation without a pre-concived notion regarding what the contributing factors and root causes are, you will never be able to objectively look at the situation, identify all contributing factors, and address them appropriately. Once you are able to openly and objectively assess all aspects, you are able to thoroughly address the injuries and accidents and truly develop action plans to eliminate future occurances. This is when one is most effective.