Safety Committees

The heart of a successful behavior based safety process.
by Jerry Pounds, President, International Division

Behavior Based Safety (BBS) is a process that has been implemented by most major companies around the world. It has been in existence for almost 30 years and has significantly reduced injuries in every business and industry.

Many issues act as barriers to effectively integrating BBS into a company's safety management system. Yet, one primary mistake makes effective BBS impossible: a lack of sincerity and commitment on the part of management, something which I call the heart of BBS.

by Terry McSween

During my “Introduction to Behavioral Safety” workshop this year at the Behavioral Safety Now Conference, I had a number of companies participating that already had behavioral safety processes in place. Many of these companies were looking for ways to enhance the functioning of their existing behavioral safety process. In our discussions about management support, our recommendation that leadership participate in behavioral safety observations received a great deal of discussion. One of the participants raised an important question, “how do we transition to management participation in observations, after ten years of promoting ‘employees only’ observations?” While clearly beyond the scope of an introduction to behavioral safety, this is an important question.

The Complacency Index: The Value of Voluntary Observations
by Terry McSween

This quarter we introduce a new section to the newsletter; Terry McSween, the president and Chief Executive Officer of Quality Safety Edge, will share his experience on a current topic in Behavioral Safety. Terry welcomes your questions and invites you to email him about an issue you would like to see him address in future columns.

Terry’s first column introduces The Complacency Index; a simple measure for you to detect if your employees are becoming complacent about the risks they face and the practices necessary to keep them safe.

by Terry E McSween

Everyone agrees that leadership support is critical to the success of BBS or any other organizational initiative. In my experience, the two most important things that leaders can do to support BBS are (1) create alignment and integration with other management systems, and (2) reviewing the BBS process. When I have seen BBS initiatives fail, it is almost always a failure in one of these two areas. In this article, I will discuss each of these issues in greater detail.