From top-down control to bottom-up involvement

As I discussed when introducing three new Es, a Total Safety Culture requires continual involvement from operations personnel, such as hourly workers. After all, these are the people who know where safety hazards are located and when the at-risk behaviors occur. Also, they can have the most influence in supporting safe behaviors and correcting at-risk behaviors and conditions. In fact, the ongoing processes involved in developing a Total Safety Culture need to be supported from the top but driven from the bottom. This is more than employee participation it is employee ownership, commitment, and empowerment. 

As discussed in Chapter 1, research has shown that safe work practices can be increased and work injuries decreased with behavior-based interventions (Celler, 1990 Komaki et al., 1980 Sulzer-Azaroff, 1982,1987). This research invariably involved outside agents such as consultants to help implement and evaluate the tactics, and the projects were usually short-term and small-scale. Large-scale and long-term behavior change requires employees themselves to apply the techniques throughout their workplace. For this to happen, employees must understand the relevant behavioral science principles and feel good about using them to prevent work injuries. 

This supports the general principle I introduced in Chapter 2. A Total Safety Culture requires integrating both behavior-based and person-based approaches to understand and 

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