We do what we do to obtain, avoid, or escape certain consequences. Consequences we work to obtain are termed "positive reinforcers." Consequences we attempt to avoid are "negative reinforcers."

In late March I attended the Indiana Safety and Health Conference & Expo in Indianapolis. I also spent time with my former West Virginia University (WVU) teammate and longtime friend, Oliver Luck. He was Academic All-America at WVU. Oliver is also a former NFL quarterback and well-respected sports executive who is now second in charge with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).

For the third year, Temkin Group analyzed the employee engagement efforts within large companies in the report, Employee Engagement Competency & Maturity, 2015. As part of the analysis, hundreds of large companies completed Temkin Group's Employee Engagement Competency & Maturity (EECM) Assessment.

About 15 years ago, I read an important engagement story regarding a line worker with a major automotive manufacturer in the United States. The story evolved from an organizational push to gain more involvement from their workers at a time when it was critical.

Two years ago, I co-authored an article with Margaret Hanson in SHP magazine about behavior change in a health and safety context (Just one more thing, SHP, July 2013). In the article, we discussed one model in particular – the COM-B (1) – which we liked for its elegance and simplicity and which we valued for the research base from which it is drawn.

Zero-injury safety targets are easy to communicate and seem to be everywhere, but such goals can be counterproductive to a company’s efforts if the context in which they are used does not go beyond slogans and good intentions, according to the lead article in the April issue of the American Society of Safety Engineers’ Professional Safety Journal.