It’s no surprise that habit plays an important role in safety. But Charles Duhigg provided an excellent reminder of just how fundamental good habits are to a positive safety culture in his keynote address at this year’s ASSE Safety 2014 National Conference.

One of the big takeaways from Duhigg’s talk was the fact that, as he says, “Even bad habits exist for a good reason.”

This is something we see all the time—in an effort to work faster employees can take shortcuts that put them at a greater risk of injury.

Fortunately, it’s possible to improve productivity without having to take shortcuts or rely on other bad habits. And we’ve found there are a great deal of business benefits to implementing strong safety habits.

We’re not the only ones to see a correlation between safety and the bottom line. Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit examines how Alcoa, an aluminum manufacturing company, was able to transform its entire business by improving safety measures.

(Alcoa happens to be one of the over 2500 companies that have implemented SafeStart).

As Duhigg notes in his book, “some habits have the power to start a chain reaction, changing other habits as they move through an organization.”

Is safety one of those habits that can change an entire organization? We think so—and suspect many of the 750+ safety professionals who have already read the Alcoa story from The Power of Habit think so too. Please download and read this excerpt to learn how safety habits can transform an organization.

And if you want to learn more about incorporating safety habits into your organization then sign up for our free safety webinars that will introduce you to how SafeStart concepts can help you build a solid foundation of safety habits.