Beware of behavioural safety initiatives, says Unite

Workers Union Unite has launched a campaign to warn members about the potential dangers of behavioural safety initiatives.

Behavioural safety is the name given to a variety of management programmes that focus on worker behaviour. Behavioural safety proponents believe that 80 per cent to almost 100 per cent of accidents are caused by unsafe acts by workers.

They argue that to prevent these unsafe acts, management should target specific behaviours and aim to change them by observing and monitoring workers. Peter Ellis, Unite national officer for the paper and corrugating industries, said: “Too many employers are introducing behavioural safety schemes thinking they are the answer to everything on health and safety. They cost a lot of money and they don't work.”

“We know from our experience, dealing with safety in thousands of workplaces, that hazards and unsafe conditions cause injury and illness. When the hazards are properly identified and fixed, injury and illness decrease. “In the meantime, it is our members who face the workplace risks and under behavioural safety and tend to get the blame as well.

Involving Unite safety reps, identifying hazards and fixing them is the real route to safer workplaces.”

Unite believes many behavioural safety programmes are designed to undermine trade union activity on health and safety, reduce the role of joint health and safety committees and shift the blame for accidents and poor health and safety from management to workers.