Enhancing Behavior-Based Safety Culture through Casual Safety Observations

Despite the influx of automated systems in the chemical manufacturing plant, human factors continue to play a pivotal role in the day-to-day activities, which can consequently result in incidents and injuries. Even so, human error remains the cause of many safety incidents that continuously occur in the workplace. This study focuses on providing a simple tool that can be used to teach personnel in manufacturing facilities about identifying safety-critical items that impact routine work. Employees are trained to take a more personal and practical approach to decision-making on the job - by training the mind to focus on ‘what could go wrong’ and ‘how could this be done differently’. This has resulted in a change in our work environment that is centered on a behavior-based safety culture that is driven by the front-line users. Furthermore, this tool provides a method for implementing behavior-based safety techniques and allows the users to take ownership for making sustainable improvements on their processes. We believe this effort has resulted in a paradigm shift and a gateway to deepen our understanding on how people can change their behavior to make safer choices.