The origins of behavior-based safety (BBS) are attributed to a number of different individuals in the fields of behavior analysis, organizational behavior, psychology, safety, and so on. Regardless of who you attribute the beginnings of BBS to, most would agree the origins of applied BBS came into fruition in the mid- to late 1970s. So for more than three decades companies have been applying BBS with varying degrees of success and failure.
Finally, attention is beginning to turn away from focusing on employees’ behaviors to accepting the fact that employees are error prone. For entirely too long, management has obsessed with unsafe employee behaviors. Indeed, in some settings this management obsession has resulted in testy relationships with employees.