Results from a recent safety culture survey (conducted by The Human Side Inc.) at a large facility revealed that approximately 90 percent of the population did not know who was on their safety team, when they met or what they did. The other 10 percent, not surprisingly, were those on the team and management.

Training class is into its third day and we have broken into teams to begin identifying all the safe practices and conditions required within each team’s assigned work area. One group is having difficulty determining the safest way to perform a particular function.

A thorough understanding of the existing culture must be accomplished. This can be realized by canvassing a large sampling of the total workforce to measure what perceptions, practices and conditions related to safety currently exist. A cultural survey can surface what is working and what is not. The information obtained can provide direction for change.

Throughout history exhaustive research has been conducted regarding applied behavioral science.

Working TOGETHER: Strategies for fielding a winning safety team

The “Team Approach”…a popular trend in industry today. The philosophy is to pull a group of employees together to work on projects, sharing the load, and empowering them in order to solve problems or perpetuate processes.

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.