History of Behavioural Based Safety (BBS)

History of Behavioural Based Safety (BBS)

is said to have begun after re-search conducted by Herbert William Heinrich an industrial safety pioneer between (1886-1962). The research led to his definitive book, ‘Industrial Accident Prevention, A scientific Approach’. Heinrichs research led to the theory that 95% of accidents in the workplace are caused by unsafe acts or behaviour.

In 1984 Behaviour Based Safety started to prove effective in the reduction of work-place accidents, and was seen as the only approach necessary to improve safety and reduce incidents.

In many companies it soon started to lose its value, as it developed into a number game, people became focused on receiving large numbers of observations, with the quality of the observations not being a concern.

Companies developed issues with blaming workers, or observations being seen as personal vendettas. BBS became stagnate with no continuous improvement, as companies were buying off-the-shelf programs from consultancies and spending exuberant amounts of money for a program that was probably not fit for purpose.

Traditional BBS programs typically fail as they do not identify what drives employees to be in a hazardous situation. After an incident a company will typically amend procedures, enforce new rules, put up posters and send out notifications etc., yet usually a similar incident will occur again. This is because companies do not investigate the systemic cause for employee behaviour that likely contradicts company policy and even common sense. Asking the most basic questions of ‘Why’ could change everything.

Original article is written & published by PDO HSE Team and copied to this website for educational purposes.