In the past ten years, the "behavioral approach" has been considered innovative and in many companies has made significant headway in improving safety. However, while the process of pinpointing desired behaviors and observing/measuring them has been a strong movement, the "love affair" is waning.
Although most statistics show that between 85 percent to 95 percent of all injuries are caused by unsafe behaviors, the term Behavioral-Based Safety has encountered skeptics and critics. Most of the criticism centers around the perception of "blaming the workforce," "ignoring physical/conditional causes" and "letting management off the hook." We see a re-emergence of the "human error" theories and development of programs centered on this concept.
Efforts are being made to avoid the word "behavior." It appears, in part, to be a matter of semantics. But, foremost, there is a misunderstanding of what a true behavior-based process is.