Combining Safety Climate and Behavior-Based Safety to Achieve Compliance: A Sociotechnical Systems Model

Research in the areas of safety climate and behavior-based safety has demonstrated that both concepts can have a positive effect in reducing injuries and losses. Safety climate draws attention to the importance of a strong culture of safety, which can have an impact on employees’ adherence to and the success of safety measures. Behavior-based safety emphasizes positive reinforcement to correct workers’ behaviors in order to reduce accidents in the workplace. In this paper, the author proposes a model to argue that safety climate and behavior-based safety influence Campbell’s performance factors, and therefore should be applied together in the analysis of safety outcomes. In addressing the issue of workers’ lack of compliance with safety measures, the author also discuss how safety climate and behavior-based safety can be integrated to positively affect safety performance.