This article was first published in the February 2017 issue of Safety+Health magazine.

Sometimes a single decision can make the difference between going home safe and not. We’re good at identifying a single poor decision (for example, failure to alert the next shift of an offline pump or missing a specific step in a complicated procedure), but few understand what it takes to make a safe decision. Advances in human factors, technology and neuroscience are changing that. The challenge is understanding what safe decision making looks like and how to develop and deploy it systematically.

In most organizations, managers have few opportunities to think about the underlying principles of safety, let alone know how to apply solutions for reducing injury exposures in the workplace.

I was there with a 50-something year old supervisor and an 18-year-old front line worker.” That’s how DEKRA Consultant Erika Gwilt begins her story demonstrating the difference between the generations in safety. “And we were talking about how things have changed and the supervisor said, "Well, you know back when I started out with the railroad, they taught us how to get on and off moving equipment. That was something we got trained to do. Today there's a rule against getting on and off moving equipment. You're not allowed to do it. And my knees are the reason why! My knees are pretty much wrecked and part of that is jumping off stuff. That's why the rule has changed the way it has.”

Since the 1980s, academics have worked to define the practices and methodologies of high-reliability organizations (HROs). These are enterprises that execute consistent and sustainable operations by creating a culture that anticipates and minimizes variation and implements high-quality decision making and controls.

Keeping workers safe is an organizational priority, and one of the most effective ways to protect frontline employees is behavior-based safety (BBS). While some so-called BBS processes masquerade as true employee-driven safety systems, they are in fact little more than behavioral checklists that fail to integrate organizational elements essential to sustained success.