Have a Wonderful and Safe Holiday Season

All of us at AwardSafety wish you and your family a safe Holiday Season and Healthy and Happy New Year.

Thank you for your support  and the trust you’ve placed on us to provide you with the best safety award system to achieve your objectives.

Is There Too Much Emphasis on Behavior Based Safety?

In the late 70’s we implemented a safety award system at a manufacturing facility for a major international food processing company.  The program awarded workers when they performed their duties in a safe manner as judged so by a team of co-workers.  Without knowing it, I guess we were implementing a behavior based safety award program.  Of course in those days the terminology BBS wasn’t as readily a part of everyday safety life as it is today,

According to Aubrey Daniels, a highly respected PhD in the behavioral sciences who has worked extensively in the safety industry…  

“BBS is a label applied to everything from safety incentive tokens to some very rigid and structured processes. Many of these processes have evolved over the years, and the consultants who designed them have changed their positions about some basic issues.”

In other words it has become a catchall for almost anything you want to put into it. And as such there are probably as many safety professionals that scorn it as praise it.  Say what you will, but BBS has been scientifically validated and ongoing research and applied studies continue to refine the process. Just a small sample of these studies can be found in this list from the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies.  

The fact is that management observation is an important activity that any organization can take to promote safety. It offers an excellent opportunity to enhance your entire safety process and especially as a way to coach employees on safe behaviors and even on their observation skills.  When you combine the observation with small awards as a consequence for a positive safety behavior you help to change that behavior into a habit. 

In addition, research shows that employees who do observations are twice as likely to change their own behavior as anyone else.

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

Who Are Your Safety Leaders?

It’s hard to read anything about the safety industry without coming upon the term “safety culture.”  But what does that really mean?  Simply put, a safety culture is nothing more than the attitude, beliefs, perceptions and values that employees share in relation to safety in the workplace.  In other words to coin a well-used phrase “it’s the way we do things around here."

Every company has one, some are great, some are good, some just so so and frankly some are pretty poor.  Let’s assume we all want one that is great.  So how do you develop it?

There have been hundreds of books written on the subject with a ton of advice on how to create one but not many that we’ve seen that discuss using your own safety leaders to help build your own.  It’s not a new approach, “it’s called transformational leadership” and it aims to instill your team with a compelling new vision where employees work toward a unified purpose…namely safe work performance.

This approach uses something call “idealized influence” which is nothing more than finding the leaders in your company who behave in ways that result in their being role models for the safe performance in your workplace.  Every company has them; you can list them on your fingertips. They are the ones who are admired, respected and trusted by their fellow workers.

A study by the Center for Construction Research and Training suggests that the most important variable when aiming to increase safety outcomes is “idealized influence.” What this ultimately means is that rather than relying solely on incentive programs or traditional training methods, if you’re not encouraging workers to lead by example you’re missing out on a powerful opportunity.

You might want to consider using this research, and here are four ways to do it:  

1. Identify the leaders within your organization who are admired for their personal character, intelligence or skills.  Think out of the box; don’t just use the traditional leaders like managers, foremen, and supervisors. For example, who are the people on your team who consistently stand out for delivering exceptional work and who are well-liked by their coworkers?

2. Recruit the leaders to your cause and tell them they have the power to create positive change! Everyone loves to be told that they are a valuable team member with the ability to make a difference. You can use them in a mentoring program, as a “safety squad”, as training facilitators or in a variety of other initiatives or educational sessions

3. Visibly support your leaders commending the safe behavior that your leaders are role modeling, rewarding open communications about safety concerns and remembering the power of a simple, well-deserved and timely compliment. 

4. Involve them in your safety award efforts by letting them recommend and issue behavior safety awards and at times reward them as well for their performance in helping to grow your safety culture.

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

Where Team Safety Awards Make Sense

Do your frontline workers connect your corporate safety goals to their own behavior?  If truth be known, probably not.  We doubt if they come to work every day concerned about the related costs of workers comp claims or the increases in healthcare costs due to incidents of accidents, or the impact on the bottom line due to lost time accidents and added labor costs.  That worry belongs to EHS and other executive management.  These macro goals are rarely shared with rank and file who are in the trenches everyday doing what they do best.

In some respects the traditional safety incentive programs that rewarded individuals based on these lagging indicators made it much easier to direct employee attention to them.  The programs were simple….don’t get into an accident and win a prize.  Unfortunately these programs spent millions in awards cost and the company got relatively nothing for the expense.  The workers got the awards because they were lucky enough not to have had an accident during the program period. It had nothing to do with changing poor safety behaviors and turning the positive behaviors into habits.  And, these programs did in fact create the problem of the non-reporting of accidents…thus the crack down by OSHA on “safety incentives.”

If you want employees to understand the correlation between safety behaviors, and the overall financial performance of your organization, you must communicate it. You need to connect the dots how their own safe behaviors relate to decreased incidents which in turn in the aggregate achieve your overall goals.  Individuals want to be able to relate their personal safety behaviors to the corporate goals.  No one works in a vacuum, and everyone can have a sense of pride in reducing accidents.

The best team based safety award program to use is one that works with ongoing communications to emphasize the objectives and provides feedback to the team as a whole of how well they are performing.  Then at the end of whatever cycle you are working with (quarterly, semi-annual or annually) you can have some kind of recognition ceremony and issue to the entire team some kind of tangible recognition award.  This award should not be promoted as a motivator, it is given after the fact as a “Thank You.”

When this linkage and understanding is clear, your coworkers actively and aggressively seek ways to continuously improve their safety behaviors, performance, and company outcomes.  Appreciating and tangibly recognizing your coworkers for doing so is one of the keys to improving and sustaining safety performance and positive outcomes for all!

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

Do Safety Awards Really Produce Results?

Over the years there have been at least two schools of thought voiced to us by safety professional on the subject question:

1. We pay our people to function in a safe manner and get the results the company wants.  They are already paid to work safe. 

2. Tangibly appreciating and recognizing individual behaviors that improve specific safety performance and outcomes have a measurable and dramatic impact on the overall safety and financial performance of a company.

 We have never seen empirical research stating accurately that safety incentives produce results. Frankly we don’t feel that you ever will.  Simply because as we have stated many times, that you can’t incentivize safety.  That would be the same as asking if employee rewards really produces a positive change in employee engagement.  You can’t incentivize that either, because there are way too many pieces to either of those puzzles and they all have to be working in tandem to be effective

We do know that you can change poor safety behavior and replace it with positive safety behavior by using rewards as positive consequences for making the change.  We do know that the reward industry in a wide ranging research project showed…

A small, positive, immediate consequence has more impact

on behavior than a large, future and uncertain one.

And

By consistently and continuously reinforcing behavior

change with small amounts of awards, you will change behavior

Stop looking at safety incentives to achieve the lagging safety goals traditionally used for safety incentive programs and substitute it with a a safety award system to recognize continuous safety improvement

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

The Absence of Accidents or the Presence of Safety?

For a little levity, take a look at this short clip about a safety pizza party brought to you by Madtv.  https://youtu.be/rK8UIGkzsf8

It’s fun to watch for those of us who have been involved with safety incentives for years.  But it does bring up a point we have been preaching for a long time.  A great safety culture is not about the absence of accidents, it’s about the presence of safety. 

In over 30 years of implementing safety incentive systems, we’ve seen hundreds of safety incentives just like the one you saw in the skit.  Regardless of OSHA coming down hard on safety incentives based on lagging indicators that do nothing to foster safe behavior, $$ millions are spent each year on safety awards that do just that.

An example in the extreme that too poignantly magnifies this problem is the April 20, 2010 disaster that occurred on the BP Horizon oil rig where 11 men died from one of the worst safety disasters in history.  Prior to the accident, this rig had a perfect safety record for seven years running! Did you know that after analysis of the accident it was reported that over 400 maintenance items had not been corrected, and two of them could have given the workers more time to leave the rig and may have prevented some of the deaths?

Having signs that count the number of days without an accident, and dinners or pizza parties or tee shirts may be great ways to communicate the need for safety and even to thank your workers for being safe, and they are perfectly legitimate ways to foster a safe environment.  But they don’t change behavior? Or merely promote the absence of accidents?

If you want real behavior change you need to continuously observe and recognize safe performance.  Only then will that performance turn into a safe habit.

One Word to Capture All Your Safety needs?

Note:The idea for the title and context in this blog come from the book “One Word that will Change Your Life,” written by John Gordon, Dan Britton and Jimmy Page.  

If you could think of one word that would encompass every aspect of your safety program (and culture) what would it be? If you’re looking for an answer here, you won’t find it.  But what may interest you is applying the process contained in the book mentioned above to the safety challenges you face today.  Here is the process

To begin, follow two simple steps: one unplug…find a place with no distractions so you can look inwardly as to what your One Word is going to be.  Two ask yourself the following three questions:

1. What does our safety program truly need?  Almost everyone in management wants fewer injuries, but this may not be what they need.  Focus on the safety needs as you see them today in your organization.

2. What is in your way?  Seek insights from your safety pro colleagues and your frontline workers to determine those things that stand in your way of a safety success. 

3. What needs to go?  If the same results are occurring using a number of historic activities, some may need to be replaced or discontinued all together to bring about the change that you need.

Oftentimes we get fixated on a numeric goal and never focus on what the people in the organization could potentially become. We tend to over-complicate and over-explain what employees must do to meet these goals. People do not remember paragraphs or sentences from one day to the next. Why not consider an approach that your safety sensitive employees might remember all year long and work to live by — adopt the “One Word” approach

The One Safety Word approach can work. You may experience a transformation in the safety potential of your organization, not just go through the motions of the same safety program you implemented several years ago.

And when you’ve used your word for a year, don’t carry it over to the next year.  Start the process again and bring in the New Year with a New Word. 

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

Customizable Gift Cards for Safety Awards

Have you ever purchased a customizable computer?  You may have decided to simplify your decision making process by opting for a popular brand with all the features you thought you needed. But the decision making process did not stop there, as you now had to customize your model by choosing from different product attributes (processing speed, hard drive capacity, screen size, etc.)

There are more gift cards used as safety awards than any other type of award.  The more

you can customize the presentation of the gift cards to match your specific safety award system, the more effective it will be.  Most users of safety awards will source only one or a handful of gift cards to issue to employees for safe work performance.  But there are some award companies that provide hundreds of gift card options for your employees.  These gift card systems have a great deal of flexibility and will free up your time and be very cost effective. 

You can find these systems online with a simple search. We would encourage you to compare what you find with our system, found on the pages of this blog.  If you would like us to do a comparison for you at no cost, just send us the vendor and we’ll be happy to help.

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

Safety Award Tips for Frontline Supervisors

At the 2017 annual professional development conference for ASSE, Judy Agnew, PhD, Sr. VP for Aubrey Daniels International spoke in a session titled “Setting Frontline Supervisors Up for Success in Safety.”

Referring to frontline supervisors as “the linchpins of safety,” Agnew emphasized that creating a safe workplace requires active participation at all levels of the organization. Frontline supervisors, she said, play a key role in holding together the many moving parts of a safety program, from training and hazard identification to equipment inspections and recordkeeping.

In our opinion they play The Key Role in engaging your workforce.  They are on the spot

everyday making sure the employees contribute to a safer workplace by participating in safety discussions, planning for and anticipating hazards, actively working to keep peers safe, reporting hazards and near misses, and challenging decisions when appropriate.

And importantly, if you have any kind of behavior based award system, they are the ones most likely to be making the observations and issuing the small recognition awards so necessary to help turn that behavior into a habit. 

They are your safety coaches that deliver constructive feedback with a focus on helping people improve.  This coaching mindset leads to more positive interactions with frontline employees, which in turn facilitates engagement.

Encourage your supervisors to get to know their personnel asking for feedback and input rather than telling subordinates what to do; to use positive communications whenever possible; to promptly address issues raised by their employees, especially hazards; to focus on behaviors that with the highest hazard potential; and to have daily safety interactions that are specific and sincere.

And remember, when you recognizing and rewarding safe behavior, don’t forget to include all you safety supervisors as well.  Don’t assume that the higher pay is all they need for their efforts.  Recognition and reward strategies will be as effective with them as with all employees, maybe more so. 

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

Stop Focusing on Safety Results

Thankfully, almost all discussions these days on safety awards concern motivating safe behaviors and focus on changing conditions that can influence future accidents and injuries.  In fact a well-designed safety award system won’t even focus on the results other than to point toward what can happen when your entire workforce is performing their job functions in a safe manner. 

In a safety summit we attended earlier in the year, a speaker presented a wonderful analogy of how to view your safety culture in relation to the results you want to achieve. It is also a great way to explain leading vs lagging indicators and how to leverage leading indicators to promote a safety culture. His comparison used an example of a football game. Allow us to paraphrase from our memory:

Picture a football game.  When you watch it you focus on the field, on the ebb and flow of the players, the offense and defensive play calling and how the other team reacts to that positioning, down and distance, the field conditions, the weather, etc.  He mentioned that everything that was happening or was influencing the play made up all the leading indicators of the future results that you want.  If you are going to have a good chance to win, the teams and the coaches must continuously adjust their strategies based on all of these factors.

The scoreboard, on the other hand, shows us all the lagging indicators, such as the number of points scored during the game, how many yards were gained or lost in the last play etc. Once points are on the board, they're not coming off. Once the clock runs out, the teams (usually) can’t do anything to change the score.  If you spend all of your time fixated on the score, you won’t be able to manage the game.

The same applies to a safety culture.  The analogy helps us understand why safety programs cannot be driven by lagging indicators.  After the game you can look at the scoreboard and in retrospect say you should have done this or that differently, but it won’t change the outcome. 

But before and during the game you can have your “hazard radar” as well as all the necessary training, communications and behavior based award efforts in place and be in the position to adjust your strategy and control the outcome.

So stop focusing on safety results and focus on and monitor those leading indicators to safe performance.  This is the best way to bring about the behavioral changes that will naturally result in an improvement in lagging indicator performance and a win for your team. 

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

The Truth about Safety Incentives - My How Things Have Changed

We were going through some back issues of safety publications the other day and came across an article from EHS Today that we thought was interesting and worth a revisit.  The article is a little over 10 years old, and is a good example of how safety incentives were viewed at that time.  But in our experience of having implemented hundreds of safety award systems in many different industries, this article has very little to do with the thought process that goes into the safety award programs of today.

The article divides safety professionals into two camps, one that says employees will not be safe unless we give them incentives to do so and the other that incentives should not be needed for them to work safely.  Those debates may have existed ten years ago, but today they are frankly a little silly.  First most safety professionals realize that you can’t “incentivize safety.  And that if you are using safety awards at all, they should be used to reinforce positive safety behaviors of all the things you know they should be doing.    

Safety award systems are not the problem, the problem is not knowing how to use awards properly to reinforce behavior change. We hope the days are over when a program is implemented that focuses on a reward rather than the behavior.  We hope that the days when you might put a brand new wide screen TV in the break room and tell the workers that anyone who didn’t have an accident that quarter would get the chance to win it in the “Super Tuesday Sweepstakes of the Moment.”

Safety awards should be part and parcel of your entire safety culture.  They’re not entitlements, they are not routine unless you call continuously reinforcing good behavior routine, they are certainly never punitive because you should never have a team based incentive in the first place, and they are by no means irrelevant as they speak to the heart of what every safety professional wants their employees to do. 

Frankly the article is demeaning to assert that safety professionals would have used safety awards to “buy your employees commitment to safety with an incentive program.”  In the hundreds and hundreds of safety award initiatives we’ve implemented we’ve never seen any who would even consider that.  They don’t. Safety is too serious a subject for them. 

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

Does Your Executive Management Prioritize Productivity Over Safety?

A recent survey by the National Safety Council found that 58% of workers in the construction industry feel that safety takes a backseat to production in completing job tasks.  In addition, 51% report that management does only the minimum required by law to keep employees safe, and 47 percent say employees are afraid to report unsafe working conditions.

4,836 people died in workplace incidents in 2015, and 937 of those killed were construction workers.  With all that has been said and done by OSHA to make sure that workers feel secure in reporting unsafe behaviors, the 47%, or any % for that matter, should be very disturbing. 

In contrast to the construction industry the report showed that only 36% of those employees

surveyed in fourteen other industries felt that their employers prioritize productivity over safety.  Nonetheless, 36% is overwhelming when you consider the comparison of choosing productivity to drive bottom line profits to potentially serious accidents or even death.  Obviously one doesn’t necessarily cause the other, but the potential is clearly higher when the concentration is on productivity.

As we spend most of our working day consulting with safety professionals about programs to reduce unsafe behavior and report unsafe conditions, our first impression was to question the above numbers.  We can’t remember the last time a safety professional told us that his executive management was more concerned about profits than safety, at least not to the extent of 50%!  Only you can speak for your own operation.

Other questions and responses from the survey that may be of interest include:

32% say management ignores safety performance when determining promotions.

62% feel that everyone is involved in solving job safety issues.

63% feel hey work in areas ergonomically correct.

48% believe safety meetings are held less often than they should be.

47% believe performance standards are higher for productivity than for safety 

33% do not feel that management has a written policy expressing attitudes about employee safety.

One thing is for sure, before you embark on any program to motivate safe behavior you might want to survey your own employees on some of these questions.  The results will certainly help you when you begin to design your own safety award system.

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

Are Merchandise Safety Awards Overpriced?

If you compare what companies pay for traditional safety incentive merchandise items with those same items at retail the answer is emphatically....YES!  The problem is that the people who receive the value of these awards...your employees, are rarely if ever the same people who purchase them.  They often don’t see the price or value because they are hidden in “points” or “award levels” or other schemes.  For example, a company issues you a safety award and tells you to pick an item from a booklet or grouping of awards.  You have no idea of what your company paid for that award.   Although you do have an idea of what the award is worth. 

Frankly any employee can easily find out what an item is worth by quickly browsing the internet and reviewing any of the many shopping sites, the most prominent of which is Amazon.com.  If the actual cost of the award ever does come to light, and it often does, employees start to question why their company paid so much for the safety award.  Then the questions start...can I get a gift card for the same price you paid for the safety award?  This is probably the main reason why gift cards have jumped to the top of the list of most used recognition and incentive awards...because of their value.

The rewards industry has argued long and hard that they have value as consultative suppliers and view that value should be part of the price of the merchandise.  If they are a value, why not just charge for that service and provide the merchandise at a more competitive price? That way it won’t hurt the employee.

From our perspective in looking at this situation for over 35 years, we believe that even the most novice buyer would have to see that they are paying more than retail for the merchandise.  The question is how much more than retail, and is there a value in the infrastructure provided by the supplier sufficient enough to offset the higher price?  Research by the Incentive Foundation clearly states that nearly 80% of the client respondents didn’t use outside incentive companies for anything other than for fulfillment of the award.  That would seem to indicate that a buyer shouldn’t pay anything more than retail if the vendor is not providing any other service. 

Ask yourself this question.  Shouldn’t your employee receive as much of the value of your safety award budget as possible?  If you have $25, or $50 or $100 or more to reward an employee, shouldn’t they receive a choice of a safety award that approximates that value?   Unfortunately, that is usually not the case when traditional merchandise is the offered safety reward.  We have done extensive research and analysis and can confidently say that the standard cost for the traditional safety award merchandise used in this industry is, on average; 50% HIGHER THAN RETAIL.  We won’t argue here what “Retail” really is, but suffice it to say that with the advent of the internet, retail is easily determined by what the employee perceives it to be.  While they can understand fluctuation of pricing from one retailer to another, swings of up to 50% are deemed unacceptable. 

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

Comparing Various Types Awards for BBS Safety Systems

Choosing an award for your BBS safety system is an important consideration.  You need to choose the award that provides a high degree of motivation while still being cost effective.  It needs to be the type of award that your employees want to achieve.      

When comparing awards for BBS programs we feel you should ask four basic questions: 

Is the award of value to the recipient and cost effective for the company?

Does the award provide a choice to the award winner?

Is the award easy to use without requiring undo internal administration?

Is the award flexible enough to be used in a continuous and consistent BBS award system? 

Over the years we have seen various types awards used for safety programs.  Which of these is best suited for a BBS program?

Cash

Research shows that you need 3 to 4 times the cash over non- cash to motivate the same result.  Cash no memorable recognition value and easily gets lost in the paycheck. It is difficult to issue on the spot cash in a BBS system.

Single Merchandise Items

Has little motivational appeal, and doesn’t capture the attention of the employee unless they specifically desire the item.  Mainly used in sweepstakes or contests this is the lowest form of employee motivation. Pricing and value can be good if purchased at wholesale. Not suited for BBS awards which are repetitive in nature.

Catalogs of Merchandise Items

More motivational appeal because of the greater choice, and if used with “points” or some other media like “cards that are collectible for future redemption, this award can be used in BBS programs.  Ability to accumulate points toward future awards can be good, but as most catalog merchandise is priced substantially over retail, the value to cost relationship is very poor. Per observation awards found in BBS programs are relatively small so having large items of merchandise may have motivation appeal but reality shows that it can take too long to collect enough “points” to redeem for the meaningful award. Managing catalog merchandise programs will take more administration than other types of awards.

Company Identified Items (Tee shirts, caps etc.)

These are more communication types of awards than motivational awards.  They are low cost and can be used as a BBS award, but are difficult to sustain.  How many tees or caps do your employees really want? Probably more of these types of awards in safety cultures than any other type, but are they really an award?

Individual or Group Travel

Very difficult to use any type of travel as a BBS award.  We’ve seen these used when media is issued and collected toward earing the award, the cost of the award is usually prohibitive.

Gift Cards

Gift cards are the most often used award in BBS programs because they are $ for $ and provided the highest choice.  They come in low denominations, are easily issued in BBS programs and can be accumulated for higher awards.  When you give your employees a large number of gift cards to choose from, you can provide virtually unlimited choice.

For every type of non-cash award considered, a part of the award cost will go to the fees necessary to support the delivery of the award.  If you have a gift card source that you can obtain without fees, almost 100% of your BBS safety award budget will get into the hands of your employees…where it belongs.

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

Safety Behavior is a Function of Its Consequences

A person does something because of what happens to them when they do it.  The cause of the behavior doesn’t happen because of what you tell them or train them to do; it happens because of what they experience immediately after the behavior…the consequence.

Behavioral research has shown that… 

A small, positive, immediate consequence has more impact on behavior than a large, future and uncertain one.

By consistently and continuously reinforcing behavior change with positive consequences you will change behavior.

Research also indicates that managers spend 85% of their time either telling people what to do, figuring out what to tell them to do, or deciding what to do because employees didn’t do what they were told to do in the first place. Safety managers still spend a great deal of their time telling workers want them to do and not enough time on the consequences. If the behavior is a function of the consequence wouldn’t it just make sense to put an equal amount of time into that side?

Understanding Consequences

Every behavior has multiple consequences, even the simplest ones, and a negative consequence to one may be a positive consequence to another.  It would take a course in behavioral science to understand all the nuances, but some fundamentals are necessary to help apply safety awards to get better results.  Unsafe behaviors are being repeated regardless of how often you tell employees not to do them.  It’s the characteristics of the consequences that give them their power.  When virtually everyone knows that smoking or being overweight is proven to be bad for you, do you ever ask yourself why people smoke or don’t lose weight?  Understanding these characteristics help to answering that question.

Positive vs. Negative

These are two sides to the same coin.  Positive consequences encourage more of the same behavior; negative consequences discourage more of the same behavior.  Positive consequences can be sustained over time, negative consequences cannot.

Example:  Public praise can be very positive for some and they strive to get more.  Others may be embarrassed by it (they don’t like it especially in a public forum) it and it will discourage the repeat behavior that achieved it.

Immediate vs. Future

Immediate consequences are much more powerful than future consequences.  The further away the consequence the weaker the influence. 

Example:  Threatening the negative consequences of smoking to a teenager

Certain vs. Uncertain

Certain consequences are much more powerful than uncertain ones.  When it is uncertain it will ever happen, it is not very powerful.  Consider the behavioral motivation of a sweepstakes where anyone that doesn’t have a reportable accident is put into a sweepstakes for a truck at the end of the year.  This type of incentive will not change the behavior of the majority of your people because while it may be positive to a few, most will view it as negative (they act accordingly but have little chance of getting the prize.)  is not immediate or certain).

Another example:  When children play with matches and get burned they get a certain and immediate consequence which will not likely be repeated.  When you speed for years and don’t get a ticket, because the threat of being pulled over and getting a ticket are so uncertain.

According to Dr. Aubrey Daniels, a well-known psychologist in the study of human behavior...“Consequences that are both immediate and certain (regardless of whether they are positive or negative) are the most powerful.  Consequences that are positive, immediate but uncertain are the next most powerful....consequences that are negative, immediate but uncertain are less powerful.  Those consequences that are certain but future (whether positive or negative) are also less powerful.  Consequences that are both future and uncertain are the weakest of all.”

Think about past safety award programs you may have been involved with.  How many of them have been programs that awarded employees in some form at the end of a quarter or year if they didn’t have an accident?  In other words, how many of those programs were in the PFU (positive, future but uncertain) category?  

The Award of Choice award system gives you a tool to provide reinforcement on a PIC basis (positive, immediate and certain.)  Your objective should be to change the behavior of your people, build long lasting, safe habits that reduce your incidents of accidents and injuries. 

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

Eliminating Safety Reward Programs In Sales Downturns

There are sales and revenue downturns in every industry and every company.  It is rare for any company to have constant profit growth year to year, and when slumps exist executive and financial management look for ways to cut expenses.  When your budget contains a line item titled “safety incentive” executive can view it as “nice to have” rather than “need to have.” When that happens what does it say about the way upper management views your safety award system? 

We have recommended for some time that you take the word “incentive” out of your safety culture.  It’s not an incentive; it’s reinforcement after the fact and a valid tactic to be used within the proven effective behavior model to change bad safety habits into good ones.  Reducing or eliminating bad safety performance will reduce your overall cost of safety, and improve bottom line results.  In difficult economic times isn’t that exactly what you need to do?  If upper management wants to cut safety award programs in difficult times, why would they want to keep them in good economic times?  It’s not the economy that should drive your safety award efforts, it’s the safety performance. 

We have a great deal of respect for safety management who try to retain their safety award efforts.  They fight that battle because they know these award programs help to cement all the other pieces of your safety effort, the training, communications, measurement, reporting etc. and build a culture of safety success.  And it helps upper management understand and support these efforts. 

Unfortunately when you are in market slump executives have a very hard time drawing a straight line between the cost of safety awards on a short term basis and short term bottom line results.  But the use of safety awards as behavior change tactics are long term strategies.  It takes time to change behavior and when one behavior is changed, another can take its place. 

It is incumbent on safety management to assist top management in understanding the importance of a complete safety effort that includes awards. In the planning stage make sure your management understands these four simple questions: 

What objective(s) do you intend to achieve by implementing a safety award system? 

What metrics do you intend to use to measure the performance toward that objective?

What will be the bottom line result for the company when you achieve the objective?

What is the bottom line consequence if you don’t achieve the objective.

If management doesn’t concur with the answer to these questions, your program will be vulnerable in bad economic times and subject to the budget cutting.  Employee safety award programs need to be viewed as irrefutably producing results.  And then it’s the finance department helping safety management trying to save them from the axe.

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

Communication Keys in Safety Award Systems

Safety award programs create a forum for open communications in a positive manner and offer excellent cross functional coaching opportunities!  No other company planned communication event will be more readily accepted than a program where the employee can receive something tangible for their efforts. People will pay attention when they know there’s something in it for them. That’s just human nature.

Good communications within your award system are crucial.  Some keys to making the communications effective are:

Make sure your safety incentive program is tailored to the realities of your company and specific to your physical location.

Active and involved commitment from the “top-down” and from the “bottom-up” is a requirement not an option!

Communicate with consistency and continuity.  Make the pledge to safety as “Our Way of Conducting Business” on a day-to-day basis throughout the organization from the top down and it will become a reality from the bottom up. 

Communicate your safety performance successes …share your lessons learned and celebrate those individuals at all levels, who standout as safety models and safety leaders!

Make sharing safety realities, performance, and outcomes a way of life and a way of thinking” every day and at every opportunity to do so … weekly safety meetings, brown-bag safety gatherings, union meetings, informal gatherings, on-site JSA gatherings, etc. everyplace, everywhere, and every occasion with everyone!

Make a commitment to take the time to listen and respond to one another about safety issues.The most frequent complaint heard from individuals that experience the dysfunction of organizations struggling with safety compliance, safety performance, and safety outcomes is: “No one takes the time to listen to what is really going on.”  And … “If and when they do, I rarely hear back from anyone who truly cares!  Why should I bother?”

Make sure you reward those small positive safety behaviors on a consistent basis so you will change them into a habit.  Use rewards that are consistent with your message

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

Customer Satisfaction and Employee Safety

You can’t achieve customer satisfaction goals without all employees working toward that goal.  When a company doesn’t provide quality customer service it is noticeable almost immediately and losing any customers is very harmful to your bottom line in a short space of time. 

Safety goals not achieved also affect the bottom line, often in a more disastrous way, but

aren’t really noticeable until it is too late.  Unfortunately, many objectives relating directly to the customer often get far more focus from management than objectives relating to safety. To achieve customer satisfaction it all gets down to employee engagement.  So too, you can’t achieve safety objectives on the job without employees being deeply involved in the process.   

Studies have found a positive relationship between employee engagement and organizational performance outcomes: employee retention, productivity, profitability, customer loyalty and safety.

The approach to building customer satisfaction is the same approach to build a successful safety culture.  You need management involvement, communication, awareness, training, measurement and recognition. Just as with employee recognition awards used in companies to build and reinforce overall employee engagement, rewards close the loop on the safety behavior model and allow management to send the message that these positive safety behaviors are effective and appreciated. 

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net