Safety Awards Should be the Icing on the Cake

How much time and money needs to be invested to develop an overall safety culture that  will be effective in reducing incidents of injuries and accidents that keep your workers safe?  That question is never answered.  Instead the reverse is discussed.  What is the cost of not being safe? 

In 2012, OSHA said that:

“In addition to their social costs, workplace injuries and illnesses have a major impact on an employer's bottom line. It has been estimated that employers pay almost $1 billion per week for direct workers' compensation costs alone.”

If you had to make an extensive list of all the pieces necessary to build the best possible safety program to eliminate accidents, how many items would be on it?  Would awards to effect behavior change be on that list? 

In context with the overall $1 Billion a week for compensation costs, when added to the multi-millions spent for all the items on your list, the diminimous awards used to positive safe behavior would seem to be a major bargain.

We had a client once tell us that he looks at his safety awards as ‘icing on the cake.’  He said it caps off all the hard work, time energy and budget necessary to make the cake the best that it could be.  It helps communicate his message with the frosting that positively reinforced every aspect of the safety culture he was trying to build.

We recently read an article by Norman Umberger, an EHS Professor at the University of Missouri that discussed safety award plans.  Mr. Umberger has an excellent understanding of the intricacies of safety awards from the perspective of a seasoned safety professional.  His last statement in the article on preferring an effective safety culture over a perfect safety award plan is well taken, although from our perspective, it should not be a case of either or.  We’ve always recommended that clients have a solid safety culture in place before embarking on any safety award system.  Properly designed safety award plans will reinforce all the important elements of an effective safety culture, not take the place of them.

The next time you plan your safety programs, think of the awards as the icing on that cake! 

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

Gift cards Are Not “Valued Safety Awards”

I recently saw a blog post that stated that cash as an award is quickly forgotten after it is received, probably so.  The post then went on to say that 40% of all gift cards received were not “cashed” within the first year, and were therefore like cash thus adding to the premise that they have no value to the recipient as well.

Frankly that is quite a stretch of deductive reasoning, and the facts are not quite right either.  First, the non redemption for all consumer gift cards has been pegged at 7% according to a study by Consumer Reports.  Second, it doesn’t necessarily follow that non redemption of total gift cards in the consumer market equates to the same non redemption when the card is used as an award. 

In our gift card award systems, the average non redemption rate is far below consumer national averages, and often less than 1%.  This is mainly due to the fact that in our systems, award winners get to choose the gift card they want from the most extensive list of popular retailers in the country.  When they choose the one the want, they use it.

One of the biggest problems we see clients make with gift cards is to buy the ones that they think people want, give them a very limited selection and not let them have the one that truly meets their lifestyle needs at the time. 

If you want your employee award programs to be successful, let your participants choose the card they want, not what you think they want. 

The fact remains that gift cards are the most asked for and most used award in the incentive industry.  They are perfect for continuously presenting small awards to your employees for improving safety behaviors. They are #1 because they provide the best possible choice at the least cost to you.

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

Challenges to Implementing Successful Behavior-Based Safety Programs

The simple methodology of BBS was founded on the principle that you can improve workplace safety by understanding what motivates employees to make unsafe choices on the job.

While BBS programs can be difficult to implement and measure, a successful program will ultimately improve workplace safety.  With the addition of data from predictive analysis, uncovering factors that influence risky decision making can be used to better educate employees on behaviors that affect their safety performance. 

However, when implementing BBS programs, there are common challenges safety executives often encounter:

Don’t shift Your Safety Effort Entirely onto the Employee. 

A successful safety culture requires participation across all managerial levels from executives to front-line workers.  Don’t forget employers must still do their part to minimize risk by educating employees about the potential hazards associated with their role, with regular hazard assessments and training before sending them out on the job.

Employee Engagement is Critical

Recent surveys show that 91% of safety professionals feel the most important element of an effective workplace safety program is direct employee participation.  From that perspective, BBS and engagement go hand in hand.  BBS offers instant recognition for workers for

positive safe behaviors and they feel like valued contributors to the company.

Workers empowered to become safety advocates foster two way communications between management and employee that is an integral part of employee engagement.

BBS Allows You to Move from Negative to Positive Safety Culture

In the past, safety managers often relied on punishment rather than using positive reinforcement to shape employee behavior.  In a BBS program management can introduce a corrective action process for spotting hazards in which that safe behavior is rewarded.

 This in turn helps to build a celebratory safety culture where you can expect an environment where positive safe behaviors are increased, hazards are minimized incidents are reduced.

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

Four Safety Truths that Reduce Workplace Incidents

A white paper written by Predictive Solutions, a leader in predictive safety software, reviewed recent results from their pioneering research in the development of their powerful safety prediction models and came up with the following four truths that can reduce workplace incidents.

On the surface these truths may seem somewhat rudimentary and obvious to the safety professionals who daily confront workplace safety.  But looking at them in depth may give pause for future consideration of inspections and safety observations that are a backbone of a successful safety culture.  The four truths are:

1.     More Inspections Predict a Safer Worksite

2.     More Inspections Specifically Outside the Safety Function Predict a Safer Worksite

3.     Too Many “100% Safe” Predicts and Unsafe Workplace

4.     Too Many Unsafe Observations Predicts an Unsafe Workplace

After a detailed analysis of all their data, some clear patterns emerged.  Here are some action steps that you can take:

• Make sure that your program includes rewards for high levels of inspections….the more the inspections the fewer the number of incidents. 
• Include as many people as you can in your inspections, specifically more from non-safety disciplines than from safety positions 
• Train for and reward the reporting of unsafe behaviors
• It’s obvious that too many unsafe behaviors will result in an unsafe workplace, so you need to assure that you commit the time and resources to fixing those unsafe behaviors.

Reward-Don’t Incentivize!

It is proven business tenet that  when you take the time to recognize and reward safe behaviors you will turn those behaviors into habits that will consistently result in lowering your incidents of accident and injury. Much has been said about the pros and cons of safety incentives, but rewards will help make your safety inspections and observations far more successful. 

The white paper above concludes that when the four safety truths were incorporated into the inspection and observations within your safety program, that worksites showed two to three times less incidents.  For a copy of the complete white paper, please click here.

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