by Bobby Jones (http://www.bobbydjones.com)
Many incident investigation programs are focused on
determining who was at fault. Much effort is spent on who to blame for an
incident and therefore who will receive some form of punishment.
This type of behavior-based approach can affect one employee
at a time and is not conducive for preventing other employees from
demonstrating a similar behavior. It is well known that humans are prone to
making mistakes.
From a prevention point of view, focusing more on at risk
behavior works at the symptom level and is considered correction activity and
not prevention activity.
In order to achieve prevention, an organization must be able
to understand how the existing management system, in place, allowed the at risk
behavior to escalate to the incident level.
