Dear Sarma,
Behavioural based safety is a topic of dispute. BBS fails to answer the question "Why a person does a job in an unsafe way when he can very well do it in a safe way"
Behavioural Based Safety is an approach to safety that focuses on workers' behaviour as the cause of most work-related injuries and illnesses. Promoters of behaviour-based safety programs maintain that 80 - 96% of workplace injuries are caused by workers' unsafe behaviours. Once the programs identify the workers who are behaving "unsafely", they are coaxed, cajoled and/or threatened into behaving “safely” on the job or sacked.
According to Safety and Health Executives, the most common Behaviour Based
Safety Programs: ‘require front line staff to carry out behavioural safety observations on their colleagues’.
The observers are trained, and the results are usually fed back on a one-to-one basis. Some programs do not use one-to-one feedback, but have a group of observers counting instances of ‘unsafe behaviour’, collating the data and reporting back to the group, sometimes developing ‘safe/model’ behaviours.
Unions and others, including health and safety specialists and academics are uncomfortable with these programs because, no matter how well they disguised, the basic assumption is that workers' unsafe acts are the cause of workplace injuries and disease and that idea is totally wrong.
Management system failure is the root cause of every accident. If BBS is accepted and implemented without understanding the consequences accident prevention will not be possible.
May I invite a serious discussion on this one issue please.
Regards,
Kesava Pillai
Regards,