Empowering self-directed behavior

Many safety professionals have learned from experience the best way to increase safety involvement is to allow the workforce to have substantial control and authority over desired safety procedures. You’re not telling people what to do in order to remain safe. Rather, you’re giving people the knowledge, tools and resources to implement a particular process that will help keep them safe.

All of this empowerment stuff is easier said than done. But surely you see advantages to this way of motivating long term participation.

Research has shown safety participation and performance can be improved by creating a link between overt behavior and self-perception. How we behave influences how we think about and define subsequent behavior. This is self-directed behavior, and it can persist without external control.