Who Is Better At Identifying At-Risk Behavior? Leader Versus Employee Processes To Implement Task-Specific Behavioral Pinpoints

Reducing workplace injuries through preventative measures requires the identification of risks so that interventions can be designed to reduce the prevalence of behaviors that may result in injury. Behavioral safety processes have been adopted by numerous companies to achieve this goal. A multiple-baseline design was used to examine the effects of implementing a task-specific checklist on the identification of risk in an existing behavioral safety program at a Fortune-500 chemical manufacturer. The pinpointing of task behaviors was performed either by managers or employee focus groups to see the impact on risk identification. The employee pinpointing process resulted in more behavioral pinpoints, whereas the manager driven process included more conditions, knowledge and awareness questions. The employee driven process demonstrated the greatest increases in risk identified when the task-specific checklist was put into use by the workforce. The management pinpointing process was associated with minimal increases in risks identified. The employee driven process also resulted in the creation of the most preventative safety action items than their manager counterparts. Overall, the study found preliminary evidence that employee driven pinpoints are more likely to conform to behavioral criteria, identify more risk, and lead to more safety action items when compared to manager processes.