Implementing The Behaviour-Based Approach: A Practical Guide

Introduction Within the field of occupational safety and health many efforts have been made to improve safety in the workplace. These efforts have focused upon legislation, engineering failure, safety awareness campaigns, safety training, and unsafe acts. Taken as a whole, these efforts have not always been successful in impacting upon accident rates. Traditionally, the legislative approach has not made much of an impact simply because the resources necessary to police the situation have not always been forthcoming. An example of this is provided by the current level of approximately 90 factory inspectors to police somewhere in the region of 100,000 construction sites, not all of which have been notified to the appropriate authorities. The legislative approach has also included attempts at 'blitz' inspections by the HSE. During 1987-88 inspections of over 2,000 construction sites were conducted. These inspections revealed a worrying picture with one third of site agents and supervisors having poor knowledge of basic health and safety requirements. Most importantly during the period of the campaign there was no measurable decrease in the number of deaths or serious injuries (HSE, 1988). The recent change of emphasis to an 'auditing of systems' approach, rather than an 'inspection of sites' approach by the HSE (1992) is very welcome, as it implicitly addresses these and other issues.