Behavioral Safety: An Efficacious Application of Applied Behavior Analysis to Reduce Human Suffering

ABSTRACT

Behavioral safety is one of the most mature and efficacious applications of organizational behavior management in industrial workplaces. Built on the foundation of behavior analysis, behavioral safety attempts to prevent harm and reduce human suffering by targeting risk and intervening upon environmental factors related to safe behaviors. The current paper will (a) review the core components of a behavioral safety process, (b) highlight the extension of modern OBM methodologies (e.g., behavioral systems analysis) in behavioral safety, and (c) review best practices from world-class behavioral safety programs accredited by the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies (CCBS).

KEYWORDS:

• Behavioral safety
• behavior-based safety
• injury reduction
• safety management
• injury prevention

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies (CCBS; behavior.org), Dwight Harshbarger and Bill Hopkins for the vision to document best practices in behavioral safety programs through the CCBS’ Commission on Behavioral Safety Accreditation. Members of the CCBS Commission, whose members include Siggi Sigurdsson, Angie Lebbon, Oliver Wirth, Mark Alavosious, Don Kernan, Sandy Knott, Alan Cheung, distinguished scholars Andressa Sleiman, and Nicholas Matey, reviewed and documented efficacious practices we present in this paper. We dedicate this work to safety professionals, executives and, most importantly, dedicated workers who work daily to make behavioral safety successful in reducing human suffering for their companies and, through dissemination, the world.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We would be remiss if we did not celebrate and feature the women in the field of behavior analysis who created the foundation for behavioral safety and continue to be leaders in the field. See, Gravina, Austin et al. (2021) for a recent blog post highlighting the women in behavioral safety.

2. We find it interesting that critics of behavior analysis, more broadly, charge the field with environmentalism (Mahoney, 1989; see, Todd & Morris, 1992 for a review), incorrectly of course (Catania, 1991; Skinner, 1974), while behavioral safety is misrepresented as not considering environmental influences (DeJoy, 2005; Howe, 2001), albeit for different reasons.