Workplace safety leadership loves to talk about “winning hearts and minds.” It sounds noble, even inspiring. But scratch the surface, and it reeks of hypocrisy. This language focuses on the behavior of workers while ignoring the real problem: systemic failures, dangerous shortcuts, and deliberate cost-cutting by those in power.
If you want proof of where the focus should really be, look no further than the graveyards of industrial negligence: Deepwater Horizon, Bhopal, Pike River. These weren’t accidents caused by careless workers—they were catastrophes born from systemic, deliberate failures at the highest levels. Yet, the same industries that caused these disasters continue to push the blame downward, hiding behind platitudes about personal accountability.
The Real Cause of Disasters
Take Deepwater Horizon. Eleven workers died, and the Gulf of Mexico was soaked in oil because BP and its contractors cut corners to save time and money. Workers raised concerns about safety protocols, but those concerns were ignored. No amount of “winning hearts and minds” among the rig crew could have prevented what happened. The system itself—the decisions made in corporate boardrooms—was built to fail.
Bhopal was worse. Thousands died overnight, and tens of thousands more were permanently injured because Union Carbide failed to maintain basic safety systems in its Indian pesticide plant. The alarms didn’t work. The scrubbers didn’t work. And when everything went wrong, the system ensured the workers and local community bore the brunt. Executives in the U.S. stayed safe, insulated by distance and legal protections, while a generation of Indians paid the price.
Even closer to home, Pike River in New Zealand left 29 miners dead in 2010. The mine was a known death trap, with no proper ventilation system, methane detectors that were often ignored, and emergency exits that didn’t exist. When it exploded, the CEO insisted the workers bore some of the responsibility. It was a blatant lie. The system failed them, not their behavior.
The Hypocrisy of Behaviorism
Behavior-based safety campaigns are a masterclass in subtle blame-shifting. They are often framed in noble terms: creating a culture where workers care for each other, stay vigilant, and “believe in safety.” On the surface, this sounds like a good thing. Who wouldn’t want a workplace where everyone looks out for their mates? But scratch the surface, and you’ll find something far more insidious. These campaigns are often a whitewashing of systemic failures, shifting responsibility from those who design the systems to those who simply work within them.
The message is subtle, almost imperceptible: if a worker gets hurt, it’s because they didn’t follow the rules, weren’t paying attention, or didn’t care enough about safety. The subtext is clear: the accident isn’t the result of inadequate safeguards, poor maintenance, or unrealistic production pressures—it’s the worker’s fault. This framing creates a narrative that exonerates leadership and systems while placing the weight of safety on the shoulders of those with the least power to effect change.
Safety Professionals and the Hidden Subtext
What’s particularly troubling is that many safety professionals who champion these campaigns likely don’t realize the underlying message they’re reinforcing. Most genuinely believe they’re doing the right thing by focusing on behavior. After all, getting workers to care about safety and look out for each other seems like a positive goal. And to an extent, it is. But the problem lies in what these campaigns leave out: the systemic factors that make vigilance necessary in the first place.
Why should workers have to constantly remind each other to “stay safe” if the systems they work in are designed to eliminate hazards? Why should they have to “stay vigilant” around machinery that should be foolproof by design? Behavior-based campaigns implicitly accept that danger is an inherent part of work—something to be managed by workers rather than eliminated by leadership.
Shifting Responsibility to the Vulnerable
This shifting of responsibility is not just a philosophical issue—it has real consequences. Workers are often made to feel that they’re responsible not just for their own safety but for the safety of their colleagues. If someone gets hurt, the questions immediately start: Did they follow procedure? Were they wearing the right PPE? Why didn’t someone speak up? Rarely does the conversation start with: Why was the system so fragile that one mistake could lead to harm?
This creates a workplace culture where workers are burdened with the emotional and mental toll of preventing accidents in systems that are inherently unsafe. It also lets leadership off the hook. If an accident happens, they can point to the safety posters, the training sessions, the toolbox talks, and say, “We did everything we could. The worker didn’t follow through.”
The Appeal of Behaviorism
Behavior-based approaches are appealing to leadership because they’re cheap. It costs far less to print posters, run training sessions, and roll out behavior-modification programs than it does to redesign workflows, replace aging equipment, or hire enough staff to reduce overwork and fatigue. Behaviorism also provides a comforting illusion of control. Leaders can feel they’re making a difference without confronting the hard truth: that real safety requires systemic change, and systemic change often means spending money or confronting uncomfortable truths about how work is organized.
A More Honest Approach
This isn’t to say that worker behavior doesn’t matter. Of course, workers play a role in safety. But the idea that safety starts and ends with them is a dangerous distortion. The truth is, safety starts with leadership. It starts with designing systems that are robust, resilient, and forgiving of human error. It starts with making sure that when mistakes happen—and they always will—they don’t result in injury or death.
Behavior-based safety campaigns aren’t just misguided; they’re a betrayal of the workers they’re meant to protect. They ask the most vulnerable to carry the heaviest burden while the powerful continue to avoid accountability. It’s time to move past the illusion of “winning hearts and minds” and confront the real source of danger: systems that prioritize efficiency and profit over human life.
Or “take personal responsibility,” while hazards remain embedded in the design of the work itself.
Leadership’s Role in Systemic Failures
The people with the most power to prevent workplace disasters are rarely the ones getting hurt. They’re the executives, boards, and regulators who make decisions about budgets, priorities, and enforcement. But instead of stepping up to fix systemic issues, they hide behind behavior campaigns. It’s easier—and cheaper—to tell workers to try harder than it is to invest in safer equipment, enforce stricter regulations, or create workflows that protect against human error.
In every disaster, the pattern is the same: warnings are ignored, costs are cut, and regulators look the other way. When the inevitable happens, executives speak about “tragic accidents” and promise “lessons learned.” They rarely admit the truth: they could have prevented it but chose not to.
A Call for Real Accountability
If WHS leadership wants to “win hearts and minds,” they should start with the people who control the systems—executives, boards, and governments. They need to stop seeing safety as a compliance exercise and start treating it as a moral imperative.
We don’t need more posters in break rooms. We need boards that demand accountability from their CEOs. We need regulators that actually enforce the laws. We need governments that prioritize worker safety over lobbying dollars.
The systems are broken, not the workers. And until leadership owns that truth, disasters like Deepwater Horizon, Bhopal, and Pike River will keep happening. It’s not a question of if, but when.
