Introduction

A key question in the minds of most safety professionals and managers/supervisors in organizations today seems to be "how do we insure that the men and women that work in our company are integrating safety, health, and environmental excellence into their daily routine?" For safety, health, and responsible treatment of the environment to become integral to your organizational culture, each of these elements must be viewed as essential to the productivity process. Safety, health, and the environment must be on par with quality, production, cost management, an so on. Everyone must recognize their responsibility and accountability for the well being of one another and the world we live in. Critical to achieving this objective is leadership's commitment to choose those actions that will demonstrate a concern for the person and their safety and health, as well as the environment we all live in.

Even though people do not want to get hurt, they sometimes either, deliberately or non-deliberately, behave in an unsafe manner. These actions may result in an accident, injury, or environmental incident. Positive or negative circumstances during times of personal or business change can be such a distracting influence such that incident rates can rise.

Internal and external safety professionals and consultants today are often in bantering conversations about what methodologies are most effective to improve a safety culture, as well as influence and change the unsafe attitudes and behaviors of the men and women that work there. Given the various theories and approaches that are being implemented, along with assertions on which are most effective in producing short- and long-term results, many people are confused by the academic terms, phrases, and claims that are used and made by all these people. What should we call it? Do we address the attitudes and thinking that underlies the behaviors first, or do we address behaviors directly first? Do we work with line employees, or do we work with management? Do we set up observation teams to give others feedback, or train our supervisors?

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