July 2, 2025
Mastering Safety Leadership: How Front-Line Leadership Decision-Making Prevents Serious and Fatal Injuries
Introduction
In 1979, my first safety improvement client told me, “We understand the engineering side, but we don’t understand the behavioral side.”
Having studied behavioral analysis in graduate school, I welcomed the opportunity to address this problem. At that time, I didn’t know that Procter & Gamble was working on a similar initiative, or that Dr. Judy Komaki had just published an article on the application of behavioral science principles to safety. This work marked the beginning of what came to be known as behavior-based safety (BBS).
The Evolution of Behavior-Based Safety
Over the next 20 years or so, my organization completed about 2,300 site-level BBS projects across industries and around the world. We studied the results of these projects and published them in a peer-reviewed journal.
Across a five-year span, overall incident frequencies dropped significantly, but there was wide variation across organizations. Some saw immediate, long-lasting improvements, while others experienced slow progress — or no improvement at all. Upon deeper investigation, we found that the strongest predictor of success was the quality of leadership driving the initiative.
Why Front-Line Leadership Matters Most
Safety leadership matters at every level of an organization, but its direct, immediate impact is at the front-line leader level. These leaders make daily decisions that influence risk exposure and shape safety culture. The best safety leadership from senior management sets the foundation for this, recognizes it and actively strengthens it
To cultivate safety leadership within your organization, it’s essential to first understand what effective front-line safety leadership looks like — and how executives and learning leaders play a critical role in setting their front-line managers for success.
Key Findings: How Leadership Decisions Shape Safety Outcomes
Our research, grounded in the framework of safe decision-making, has revealed how leadership decisions shape outcomes. In one study, we looked at 356 Serious Injuries and Fatal (SIF) events in depth, identifying:
- A network of decisions: We mapped out the series of decisions made over time leading up to the event.
- Decision-making levels: We examined who was making these decisions — from top-level leaders to site-level and frontline leaders.
- Cascading impact: Early decisions influenced later decisions, showing a domino effect of leadership choices throughout the organization.
- Site leaders’ influence: The decisions made by leaders above site-level leaders shape how site leaders themselves make decisions.
- Front-line leaders’ influence: Site-level leadership decisions directly shape how frontline leaders make daily safety decisions.
This is important because employees interpret leadership decisions as signals of what truly matters, and this perception informs their own decision-making processes. For example, when frontline leaders face operational challenges, their perception of leadership priorities influences their decision to prioritize either safety or production — ultimately driving behavior.
A key takeaway from this research is that “decision making” is a more effective lens through which to view safety improvement than simply focusing on “behavior.” While behaviors are important, decisions shape behaviors and create the environment for safety.
Practical Actions for Effective Safety Leadership
Here are some specific actions that successful safety leaders take:
1. Ask employees about their safety concerns.
When you walk around and talk to front-line employees, don’t just look for workers who aren’t wearing protective equipment or following the safety procedures. Engage employees in meaningful conversations about the safety related issues they’re concerned about.
- “How can we make the workplace safer?”
- “What stands in the way of making the workplace safe?”
Listen as though your life depends on it.
Let employees know that you’re listening.
- “So your concern is that the way we’re doing this process creates exposure to injury, is that correct?”
- “And you think finding a solution would reduce exposure, is that right?”
Work to understand what the employee is telling you and why.
2. Uncover opportunities to make the workplace safer and take direct action.
Don’t wait until an injury occurs to take action when you see exposure. It’s one thing to say you think safety is important: it’s another to show your commitment in the form of action. If necessary, take opportunities to a higher level of leadership analysis.
3. Pay special attention to exposure to serious injuries and fatalities.
All injuries are worth preventing, but the top of your list should be the prevention of serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs). Talk to employees about exposure to serious events, track down the precursors that lead to fatal events. Your employees can see them — sometimes better than you can.
4. Look for ways to engage employees in making the workplace safer.
Great safety leaders go beyond observing for unsafe behavior and reprimanding employees. They tell the employee what they see them doing that is safe. Get the employee to talk to you, then talk about improvements. Instead of placing blame on the employee, finding ways to support their safe behavior.
Moving Beyond Blame: Leadership’s Role in Shaping Safety
Forget Heinrich’s Safety Triangle (from 1931). It has contributed to blaming the employee, which is counterproductive. Traditionally, the most valued front-line safety leaders were those who:
- Vigorously correct unsafe behavior.
- Think their job as a safety leader is to get out and find the unsafe employee.
This approach assumes that the behavior of the worker is the primary problem to solve. But our analysis of SIF events tells a different story: Decisions made at higher levels — both at the site and above — create the conditions for worker behavior.
The great majority of unsafe behavior comes from decisions making by management. Find out how this works at your facility by listening to your front-line employees.
For long lasting safety improvement, site-level leadership must avoid blaming employees and focus on reducing exposure. This means recognizing that frontline decisions — shaped by leadership priorities — are key drivers of serious and fatal injury prevention.

This article was originally published on Training Industry.com in June 2025
To explore organizational culture in greater depth, you can read Tom Krause’s book If Your Culture Could Talk: A Story About Culture Change.