Podcast: A Psychologist’s Reflections on Safety

E. Scott Geller has seen some things. 

Geller started teaching psychology at Virginia Tech in 1969, a year before President Richard Nixon signed the legislation that created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. In 2025, Geller retired, well, at least from being a full-time professor. He still volunteers his time as director of the university’s Center for Applied Behavior Systems.

He has borne witness to the development of technologies, tools and philosophies in the field of psychology and in culture at large. He’s had a large influence in shaping the field of psychology and workplace safety, too. During his career, Geller has taught tens of thousands of students. He has authored, co-authored or edited over 51 books, 88 book chapters, 39 training manuals, 272 magazine articles, and over 300 research articles.

Podcast Transcript Excerpt:

[Editor's Note: This excerpt has been lightly edited for grammar and clarity, such as to omit word repetitions, remove incomplete thoughts and punctuate run-on sentences.]

EHS Today: For our listeners who haven't heard of behavior-based safety, could you share a little bit about how your ideas initially coalesced for that and what role that theory has in workplace safety for today, and possibly for tomorrow?

Scott Geller: We started in 1979, and we called it behavior-based safety. The concept was basically this: Co-workers know more than anybody else what's safe and what's not safe in the workplace. What if we developed a behavioral checklist with the workers? What if they came up with a list of what is safe and what is at risk on our job?

And then we have a checklist. That's the first challenge. Come up with a checklist of behaviors that are safe and not safe. And of course, along with that, what are the conditions that influence safe or unsafe?

You take the checklist. And with the other person's permission, you ask, can I observe you? And of course, when you're being observed, you're on your best behavior, but the observer is simply checking safe and at risk. Notice I don't say unsafe. That sounds too negative. Just at risk.

We list those things, then we come up with a percent safe. The next point is to communicate to that worker what you found. We call that feedback. Supportive feedback means telling people what they did well, what they did right. Corrective feedback—that's a difficult one for many people—tells them what was not the best it could be.

So that's what we did in 1979. We started a company called Safety Performance Solutions, traveled around the world teaching this, and it became a worldwide thing. Everybody knew behavior-based safety. But here's the issue.

What they did is watched with a checklist, recorded the data on the computer, and then they gave everybody feedback, percent safe. They didn't do the coaching.

Why not? Why didn't they communicate one-on-one with the other individual? Well, we know why. They didn't know how. They didn't feel confident or comfortable in giving corrective feedback. And by the way, we're talking 1979.

I claim that today that's even more difficult. We have a very independent, self-serving, cell phone culture. It's tough to walk up to a person, even in the workplace, and give them feedback.

I was going to ask you a question, but I think you just answered it, which was if some aspect of safety has worsened in the past 50 years. It sounds like for you, the answer is not specific to safety, but is a reflection of a change in culture. Did I hear that right?

Oh, that's beautiful. The word I would use today is social support. Research shows that the perception of social support improves physical wellness and psychological wellness. That's what we have to ask ourselves: Do we have a lower perception of social support?

What do I mean by that? I mean, people around us who know us, who would look out for our safety, who would be willing to give us feedback even when it's not correct—not supportive feedback.

A very important concept to teach is behavioral feedback, and the difference between supportive feedback and corrective feedback. Many people use the word positive feedback, but here's my response to that: Any feedback that's given correctly is positive. Any feedback that helps the person improve is positive.

But when you're supporting good stuff, it's supportive feedback. When you're trying to correct or improve behavior, it's corrective feedback. And again, repeating myself, giving corrective feedback is easier said than done because you have to be, here's a word again, empathic.

You have to take the time to listen to the other person's perspective. In today's culture, there's very little of that, even with physicians, for example. Everybody wants to get the job done as quickly as they can, looking at their cell phone. Everybody's in a hurry. So we are efficient, but not effective. Because effective takes time, and I claim requires empathy.

You keep touching on so many things I want to talk about. But one thing that I think I'm hearing is that culture, like safety, doesn't happen in a vacuum. They comingle and confluence one another.

So, something that you're seeing on the manufacturing floor is probably something you're going to be seeing in another, more personal context. Maybe it's something that you're seeing while coaching your kids' sports league or at a faith service or something like that.

The idea being that these things are part and parcel of your entire existence. They're not isolated. And they help to shape the way we see and navigate the world in many ways.

That, Nicole, is excellent. That's what you're saying is the context changes, the situation changes, but the principles remain the same. Again, it goes back to coaching. We need to coach in every situation: parent to child, minister to congregation, coach to athlete, and vice versa. Apply that coach, care, observe, analyze, communicate, and help.

But that requires a sense of—here's a big word again—interdependency. We're all in this together. We live in a system. But I must tell you—I don't know about you—but I don't trust any as much as I used to. We get so much scamming happening. Who do you trust? If somebody tells me something, do you believe it? It's a shame.

I don't know about you, but I can get lost in the internet just reading my messages. And some of those messages are absolutely scam. They're fake. People are trying to get to us by lying to us. In that context, how do we get people to accept the truth? How do we get people to trust another person to give us feedback?

Again, it's tough. We need to fight it. We need to fight this thing. I think that means we need to talk about it more. We need to interact. They say, don't interact about politics. Don't discuss politics. And I want to say, why not?
Why not find out the other person's opinion? You don't have to believe them, but why do they think it that way? Say that. And how does that compare with what you believe?

All I'm saying is, become more interdependent, more empathic. By the way, Stephen Covey told us that compassion is empathy in action, so you cannot really be compassionate without understanding where the other person is coming from.

That takes time. We need to kind of slow down sometimes, put down our cell phone, and have a real conversation with another person.

We hear stories where even families sitting around the table are looking at their cell phone rather than each other and having a conversation. Years ago, with my kids, we used to watch TV instead of interacting. Today, we all have our own TV, our own personal cell phone. That, quite frankly, is taking us away from appreciating each other and recognizing each other. And one more time, expressing gratitude and feeling gratitude.

You haven't used these words exactly, but I feel like everything that we're talking about goes back to two concepts that are very similar but have different names, one being total worker health and psychological safety.

Oh, absolutely. In fact, we're studying psychological safety in the classroom right now. What does psychological safety mean? It simply means that we feel comfortable. We feel comfortable in our environment, whether it's home, workplace or school.

We feel that we're contributing, and we feel that we can challenge the status quo, that we can challenge—or ask—the teacher a question, or our mom or our dad a question, or the safety person a question.

We can challenge a safety directive, for example. Why are you telling us to do it this way? The common answer is because I told you, because OSHA says it that way. No, that's not being empathic. It's getting down and being, here's a word, I'm going to say it again, be humanistic. Reflect each other's feelings. Learn about each other. And we can only do that by listening with empathy.