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Home›Courses›Safety Training›Workplace Safety: Unsafe Acts and Behaviors

Workplace Safety: Unsafe Acts and Behaviors

21 minutesENSafety TrainingOSHA General Duty Clause, behavior-based safety best practices
Quick Answer

Workplace Safety: Unsafe Acts and Behaviors is a 21-minute online course that teaches employees to recognize, understand, and correct unsafe behaviors and actions that contribute to workplace incidents. It covers the human factors behind safety violations and the behavior-based safety principles that reduce injury risk. It is designed for employees and supervisors across all industries and includes a downloadable certificate of completion.

Course Overview

Studies consistently show that unsafe acts and behaviors contribute to approximately 80-90% of all workplace incidents. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded 5,070 fatal work injuries and 2.5 million nonfatal injuries and illnesses in 2024. While engineering controls and administrative procedures are essential, the majority of incidents occur when workers take shortcuts, bypass safety protocols, lose situational awareness, or underestimate hazards - behaviors that are predictable and preventable with proper training.

This course trains your employees to recognize the unsafe behaviors that lead to incidents and understand why those behaviors happen. Your team will learn about the human factors that drive risk-taking - complacency, rushing, fatigue, and peer pressure - and what specific steps they can take to interrupt unsafe patterns. The course moves beyond telling employees to be safe and gives them a framework for understanding why violations occur and how to hold themselves and their coworkers accountable.

What You'll Learn

  • The relationship between unsafe acts, unsafe conditions, and workplace incidents
  • Common unsafe behaviors: shortcuts, bypassing guards, improper PPE use, and rushing
  • Human factors that drive unsafe behavior including complacency, fatigue, and peer pressure
  • Behavior-based safety principles and observation techniques
  • How to intervene when observing unsafe acts by coworkers
  • The role of personal accountability in preventing incidents
  • Building a culture where safety observations are expected and welcomed

Who Needs This Training

  • All employees as part of safety orientation or annual refresher training
  • Workers in high-hazard industries where behavioral safety is critical
  • Supervisors responsible for observing and correcting unsafe work practices
  • Safety committee members participating in behavior-based safety programs
  • Employees returning to work after an incident or near-miss event
  • Organizations implementing or strengthening a behavior-based safety culture

Regulatory Background

While OSHA does not have a standard specifically addressing unsafe behaviors, the General Duty Clause of the OSH Act, Section 5(a)(1), requires employers to maintain a workplace free from recognized hazards. Unsafe behaviors are a recognized contributor to workplace hazards across every OSHA standard, from machine guarding to fall protection to hazard communication. OSHA's FY 2025 Top 10 Most-Cited violations totaled nearly 14,000 citations, and the underlying cause of many of those violations traces back to behavioral factors - employees and supervisors who bypassed established procedures. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 5,070 fatal work injuries in 2024, and safety research consistently attributes 80-90% of incidents to human behavior rather than equipment failure alone. OSHA penalty amounts of up to $16,550 per serious violation and $165,514 per willful violation apply when unsafe acts result in recognized hazard exposure, regardless of whether an injury actually occurred.

Frequently Asked Questions

Safety research consistently attributes approximately 80-90% of workplace incidents to unsafe acts and behaviors rather than purely mechanical or environmental failures. Common contributing behaviors include taking shortcuts, bypassing safety devices, failing to use required PPE, and rushing to meet production demands.
Behavior-based safety (BBS) is a systematic approach that uses observation, feedback, and reinforcement to identify and correct at-risk behaviors before they result in injuries. BBS programs focus on the specific observable actions that lead to incidents rather than relying solely on rules and punishment. Organizations with mature BBS programs consistently report significant reductions in recordable injury rates.
While OSHA does not have a standalone behavior-based safety standard, unsafe acts are the root cause of violations under nearly every OSHA standard. Training employees to recognize and correct unsafe behaviors directly reduces the likelihood of citations under standards for machine guarding, lockout/tagout, fall protection, PPE, and others. Documented behavioral safety training also demonstrates an employer's good-faith commitment to compliance.
Yes. Because the majority of workplace injuries stem from behavioral factors, training that addresses unsafe acts directly targets the root cause of most claims. Organizations that implement behavior-based safety programs typically see reductions in incident rates, lost workdays, and workers' compensation premiums over time.
The course provides a framework for understanding why unsafe behaviors occur, which helps supervisors conduct more effective safety observations. Rather than simply noting violations, supervisors learn to identify the underlying conditions - rushing, complacency, fatigue, peer pressure - that drive at-risk behavior, enabling more targeted and constructive interventions.

Related Courses

Employers building a behavior-based safety program often pair this course with Safety Decision-Making: Overcoming Human Nature to address the cognitive biases that lead to unsafe choices, and Workplace Leadership Safety: The Basics for supervisors who need to model and enforce safe behaviors on their teams.

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$24.95
per person
Volume Pricing
Team Size Price per Person
1 - 9$24.95
10 - 24$19.95
25 - 49$17.95
50 - 99$17.50
Subtotal $24.95

Certificate of completion included. Downloadable upon passing the final assessment.

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$24.95
per person