Comparing safe vs. at-risk behavioral data to predict accidents

The Safety Observations Achieve Results (SOAR) program at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) encourages employees to perform in-field observations of each other's behaviors. One purpose for performing these observations is that it gives the observers the opportunity to correct their co-worker's at-risk work practices and habits (i.e., behaviors). The original underlying premise of conducting theses observations is that major injuries (e.g., OSHA-recordable events) are prevented from occurring because the lower level at-risk behaviors are identified and corrected before they can propagate into culturally accepted unsafe behaviors that result in injuries or fatalities. Unlike other observation programs, however, SOAR also emphasizes positive reinforcement for safe behaviors observed in order to help establish a strong positive safety culture. Since the SOAR program collects both safe and at-risk leading indicator data, this provides a unique opportunity to assess and compare the two kinds of data in terms of their ability to predict future adverse safety events. This paper describes the results of analyses performed on SOAR data to assess their relative predictive ability. Implications are discussed.