How Can We Identify Critical Behaviors

Krause (1997, p. 180) suggests four ways to identify critical behaviors at a site  

Review work rules, job safety analyses, and procedure manuals 

These four approaches are rather self-explanatory, but the reader interested in learning more detail is referred to The Behavior-Based 

Safety Process Managing Involvement for an Injury-free Culture (Krause, 1997). Ultimately each site should develop their own inventory of critical behaviors, and the list is usually not that long— perhaps 15 to 25 behaviors that are genuinely crucial to safety performance. Earnest advises that the list be kept to five or ten critical behaviors (1994, p. 3). 

It is worth noting again that developing job-specific behaviors is very similar to performing a job safety analysis (JSA) or job hazard analysis (JHA). JHAs and JSAs, however, are not normally written as operational definitions of behavior. It is suggested that organizations upgrade their JSAs to behavioral standards (Krause, 1997, p. 185). 

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