Beyond Behavior Based Safety: Dr. Tom Krause’s Approach to Real Safety Culture
Imagine cutting workplace incidents by 40% in just one year. That’s the kind of breakthrough Dr. Tom Krause achieved when he stepped outside traditional safety models and combined applied behavior analysis with Deming’s systems thinking. The outcome was immediate and powerful. Yet, surprisingly, many organizations still haven’t tapped into this deeper approach.
Dr. Krause didn’t start out in the safety field. With a foundation in clinical and experimental psychology, his early work looked a lot like therapy sessions, not industrial consulting. Everything shifted when a struggling manufacturing company reached out for help. Their safety performance was technically strong, but when it came to behavior, they were completely lost.
“They said to me, ‘We get the technical side but the behavioral side is missing,’” Krause recalls. That challenge sparked an insight. By connecting behavior science with systems thinking, he designed a method that reduced incidents by nearly half in just twelve months. What began as a career in psychology quickly became a spark for a new way of looking at workplace safety.
Where Behavior-Based Safety Falls Short
Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) gained traction quickly and became the “go to” method for many companies. The process made sense: define behaviors, observe, measure, and give feedback. But here’s the problem, most organizations stopped there.
“What they left out,” Krause explains, “was the analysis of context, the real drivers of behavior.” That missing step is critical. Without it, companies risk replacing learning with blame, and the momentum for improvement fades away.
Leadership Shapes Safety Culture
You can’t just tell people to “work safe.” Behavior doesn’t happen in isolation, it’s influenced by the systems around it. And those systems? They’re led by leadership decisions.
Consider the pressures many employees face: production demands, tight schedules, and workplaces where speaking up feels risky. These conditions drive behavior more than any poster or policy ever could.
As Krause puts it: “If you ignore the context, you’ll end up making choices that weaken the depth and staying power of your results.”
The Risk of Stopping Short
Krause has watched many organizations start strong with his model, only to pull back when it comes to the hardest part: the fourth step. True change means honest dialogue, accountability at every level, and a willingness to look beneath the surface.
It’s not easy but it’s the only way to create a safety culture that lasts. Skip that step, and you’re not building culture, you’re just managing behavior.
So ask yourself: is your safety program designed to uncover what shapes behavior, or to assign blame? If it’s the latter, the outcome is already set. Real safety begins by digging into what truly drives actions. That’s the foundation of a culture that endures.
