Building Safety Commitment: A Primer

Safety commitment is a general term often used to describe an aspect of a person’s character or an organization’s culture, and is related to how dedicated people are to working in a safe manner. The phrase is seen in safety periodicals and even in the scientific literature (McHugh, Moran, & Bond, 2014), and it is typically referred to as contributing factor to the success of a safety procedure, process, or piece of equipment. Despite its common use, the phrase has not actually been well-defined from an applied behavioral science perspective. This paper will review the behavioral definition of commitment (Moran, 2013), contrast it from compliance, and discuss how commitment can be improved with modern behavioral science.