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  • Report
  • 1st Nov 2019

EAST for Health & Safety

Applying behavioural insights to make workplaces safer

Key findings

  • Can a sticker make us safer? Researchers in China and Kenya used stickers to #nudge people into staying #safe. Find out more in our report on applying behavioural insights to health and safety.
  • Do warning signs and #safety campaigns actually change our #behaviour? Most of the time, the answer is 🤷. We think it’s time to bring rigorous evaluation to safety in the workplace.
  • A leading cause of death among fisherman - one of the UK’s deadliest jobs - is not wearing a #lifejacket. Helping people stay safe at work is not only about machines and technology; it’s also about changing #behaviour.

The EAST framework focuses on four simple principles to encourage a behaviour: make it Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely (EAST). This version of EAST focuses on how the behavioural insights approach can help keep people safe when they are at work. This field of health and safety in the workplace is often referred to as occupational safety and health (OSH).

The original EAST framework was published in 2014. Since then we have received feedback from many policy makers and practitioners that they find it useful to have a simple, memorable framework to think about effective approaches to influence individual behaviours. We think it can have an impact in making our workplaces safer. Therefore, this document tailors the EAST framework to examples and thinking on OSH.

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