Organizations have always relied on science to guide many aspects of their business. Understanding and applying scientific knowledge from chemistry, physics, biology, and engineering are essential to achieving consistent business results. Interestingly, when it comes to managing human resources (around safety or otherwise) organizations rarely use the relevant science of human behavior—behavior analysis—to improve safety performance.
An in-depth knowledge of behavior analysis can enable leaders and safety professionals to build systems and management practices that create a sustainable corporate-wide safety culture. Such a culture builds safe behavior into every process, ensuring that safety is not something separate from delivering cost-effective, quality products and services to customers. Everyone, from the boardroom to supervisors to front-line employees, has a specific role to play in creating a safety culture. Such a culture is possible only when managers and all other employees understand the science of behavior to be more than a collection of tools and techniques but rather the only way to create a sustainable, high-performance organization.