Occupational health and safety often gets sidetracked from the main issue of preventing injury and illness at work. I often hear employers, particularly in small business, complaining that their workers continue to do the wrong thing even though the employers have done everything they can think of.
Sometimes an approach is offered that seems like a quick-fix to all the safety problems. The one that always annoys me is behavioural-based safety. BBS is like the Hydra and reappears regularly in different guises and with different jargon.
A podcast crossed my desktop this morning that provides a different perspective on “why rational people make irrational decisions”.
The podcast illustrates the conflicts in trying to make the right decision by discussing the decision of a pilot in the Canary Islands who caused a major crash. The pilot was also the head of safety at KLM Airlines.
The podcast does not focus on workplace safety but the discussion is probably the better for it.