How can one reduce unsafe practices

The accident was fatal due to an explosion. Many other companies avoid using punishment after an accident as a strategy to discourage unsafe behaviour. Instead, they focus on using accidents as a learning opportunity. This way, there is no blame assigned to one person, rather these companies focus on fixing the procedures that were involved in order to prohibit repeat incidents.

The best plan when it comes to reducing unsafe acts in the workplace is always a balanced approach. The balanced approach combines both employee discipline and accident investigation to learn from and correct wrong practices.

It is also important that safety rules are communicated regularly to employees. Check out this article on how a daily safety talk significantly decreases the likelihood of workplace accidents.

There should be a written policy for both punishment and investigation, outlining the consequences for each violation. By approaching each situation with a balanced approach and involving your employees in preventing future accidents, you create a positive environment that promotes health and safety.

Are you looking for more health and safety resources? Check out our article on the 7 Best Health and Safety Videos. This finding is totally consistent with our findings, because as depicted in Figure 3 , the rate of HRUBs increases as the age of employees decreases. Furthermore, Amiri et al. The rate of HRUBs was much lower among married employees Furthermore, safety training was the most important factor affecting HRUBs and any attempt to improve employees' behavior should start by concentrating on this variable.

In comparison with other techniques normally used to investigate unsafe behavior such as path analysis PA and structural equation modeling SEM , the BN has the advantage of being capable to predict the intended outcome, while PA and SEM are very powerful tools in explanation of behavior and normally are not used for prediction Moreover, the present study had several limitations, which should be covered by future studies. Although using SBS technique for assessing safety behavior has several advantages in contrary to questionnaire based methods which always are in danger of conservative responses from employees, using this technique, we would observe and record the real behavior of employees that ensures their correctness, another benefit of SBS is that it provides a large database which can be used for training the network.

It is recommended for future studies to conduct an interview or a questionnaire study after the SBS is completed, on the same employees whom behaviors were observed to include more variables into the network. Training was the most important factor affecting safety behavior of employees. By holding high quality safety training courses, companies would be able to reduce the rate of high-risk unsafe behavior significantly.

The authors would like to thank Hamadan University of Medical Sciences for the financial support under PhD thesis scheme grant number: The rate of high risk unsafe behavior is higher in the afternoon and last days of a week. J Res Health Sci. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U.

Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Study design: A cross-sectional study. Introduction Although construction safety has been significantly improved in recent years, accidents continue to occur and construction still is one of the most risk-posing industries in the world 1 , 2.

Methods The present study was conducted in a large power plant construction site in Iran. Open in a separate window. Table 1 Variables of the study and their states. State 2: "from 11am to 2pm" for observations that have been made in time interval from 11 am to 2 pm. State 3: "from 2pm to 6pm" for observations that have been made in time interval from 2 pm to 6 pm.

Training State 1: "s1" for employees who have participated in one or two safety training courses, State 2: "s2" for employees who have participated in three or four safety training courses, State 3: "s3" for employees who have participated in five or more safety training courses, HRUB State 1: "no" for a safe behavior State 2: "yes" for HRUBs. Figure 1. Prior probability of variables after computing the parameters of the network. Figure 2.

Figure 3. Probability of High-risk unsafe behaviors at various states of other variables. Discussions Unsafe behaviors have always been a challenging area in managing safety and health in workplaces, especially in construction sites.

Conclusions Training was the most important factor affecting safety behavior of employees. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Hamadan University of Medical Sciences for the financial support under PhD thesis scheme grant number: Conflict of interest statement The authors declare no conflict of interest. Funding Hamadan University of Medical Sciences. Highlights Safety behavior sampling was used to provide a data base of cases, Bayesian network was utilized to analyze high risk unsafe behavior, Safety training was the most influencing factor, The rate of high risk unsafe behavior is higher in the afternoon and last days of a week The rate of high risk unsafe behavior increases by decreasing the age of employees.

References 1. Leigh D. Statistics on fatal injuries in the workplace in Great Britain National Safety Council. Injury Facts. Illinois: NSC; Saf Health Work. J Constr Eng Manage. Industrial accident prevention: A safety management approach. New York: McGraw-Hill; Causal factors in construction accidents. Suffolk: HSE Books; Abdelhamid T, Everett J.

Identifying Root Causes of Construction Accidents. Contributing factors in construction accidents. Appl Ergon. Association of subjective and interpretive drowsiness with facial dynamic changes in simulator driving. Choudhry RM. Behavior-based safety on construction sites: A case study. Accid Anal Prev. Safety analysis in process facilities: Comparison of fault tree and Bayesian network approaches. Tags: Safety Management. Call Us Today! Focus on Punishment for Unsafe Behavior Some companies will fire or demote employees who are involved in accidents due to failure to follow safety procedures in an effort to show their commitment to safety.

Focus on Investigation and Corrective Actions Other companies avoid using punishment after an accident as a strategy to discourage unsafe behavior and instead focus on using accidents and incidents as a learning opportunity.

Our Recommendation: A Balanced Approach We recommend a balanced approach to dealing with unsafe behavior that combines 1 employee discipline for unsafe behaviors and 2 accident investigation to learn from each accident or near-miss that occurs. Y our policy could provide for termination of an employee for the following conduct: Behaviors which you have identified previously as "zero tolerance" behaviors; Excessive and repeated safety or health violations; Purposely ignoring safety or health rules; Unsafe actions that seriously jeopardize the safety or health of others; General disregard for safety and health of self and others.

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