The carrot or the soft stick?: the perspective of American safety professionals on behaviour and incentive‐based protection programmes

This article explores the growing rise of behaviour‐based safety programmes in the workplace as a means of preventing on‐the‐job injuries. In it, the authors delve into the history of both incentive‐based and behaviour based safety programmes, exploring the administrative, political, and practical issues involved with each. The authors then present an analysis of a survey conducted of over a hundred practicing safety executives in the United States. While no significant differences were found between survey respondents based on the size or nature of their organisation, the authors did find that tenure on the job was positively correlated with increased receptiveness to the efficacy of behaviour‐based programmes. In the end, it was concluded that success with both behaviour‐based and incentive‐based safety efforts are dependent on top management’s support of such efforts, both through personal involvement and example setting and through provision of the necessary organisational resources to promote workplace safety.