Journal of Psychosocial Research

Vol. 14, No. 1, 2019, 81-94

DOI No. : https://doi.org/10.32381/JPR.2019.14.01.9

Journey of Behaviour Based Safety in India: An Overview

Harbans Lal Kaila

ABSTRACT
Indian safety culture suffers between the choices of compliance and compromise.
The journey of safety cultural mindset assessments and management has not been
smooth rather painful for the safety officers as well as the companies employing
them, as the focus was not on the human behaviour that is the root cause of almost
all incidents and accidents harming both the people and the business. This article is
an update about how the behavioral based safety approach developed in Indian
organizations, in brief, a description about the journey of BBS in India. The results
of a few organizations are described that implemented BBS and found the
transformation in order to achieve a level up towards their zero-harm culture.
Corporate Insights would helporganizations attaining mission of zero-harm.

Key words: Behaviour Based Safety, BBS, Safety Culture, India

1. INTRODUCTION
Indian industry or workplaces would have accidents almost every day as behavioural
compliance on an average is 70%. Most of the safety management systems have aimed
at controlling unsafe conditions, whereas almost 100% of accidents are triggered by
unsafe acts or behaviours. Globally, achieving zero accident at the workplace remains
one of the major social and economic areas of concern. Every day, 6,300 people die as
a result of occupational accidents or work-related diseases - more than 2.3 million
deaths per year (International Labour Organization, 2013).
Behaviour Based Safety (BBS) as an application of behavioural science has been
widely accepted worldwide as an important tool of building a safety culture in industry,
helping in achieving zero accident. BBS has been successfully implemented in prestigious
Indian organisations such as GAIL, HPCL, IOCL, L&T, Vedanta, Tata Projects, Sterlite
Power, Pidilite, Hindustan Construction, Afcons, Privi Organics, DCM, Galaxy etc.

Corresponding author. Email : kailahl@hotmail.com

ISSN 0973-5410 print/ISSN 0976-3937 online
©2019 Dr. H. L. Kaila
http//www.printspublications.com