Can You Afford Not to Have a Safety Award Program?

Everyone in the safety industry understands that deaths can occur on the job.  They may not make the evening news, but about 13 people die every day from workplace accidents.  Thanks to the untiring efforts of safety professional these deaths are down 66% from 38 deaths per day in 1970.  While we certainly don’t believe safety awards were the reason for the drop in deaths, but when used as a way to change behavior  and in combination with all the other safety tools it had an impact.

What do companies spend on safety award initiatives?  From Incentive Magazine research on safety award programs we find some interesting data:

% of Companies Responding	Average Budget $ Per Worker
43%	$3 per month
20%	$5 per month
10%	$15 per month
12%	$30 per month
11%	$62 per month
5%	$85 per month

Considering that recent research conducted by Liberty Mutual showed that for every $1 invested in a safety award program there was a corresponding savings of $3.  Other research on the same subject show the ROI could be as high as $6 per $1 spent.

The safety industry has made great strides and companies are more diligent about education, measurement, training and feedback on safety.  But the employees can often become the wild card without a proper safety award system in place.

Is $15 or $20 a month per worker in a system to reinforce safe work practices too much to invest in making your overall safety effort a success, especially if the average cost per WEEK in work related injury runs more than $35000! 

Where do you stand in the debate on safety awards?  Are you a hardliner that argues “I am not going to pay extra for employees to follow the rules and be safe.  Or are you a pragmatist and may say “Nothing has a way of improving safety performance like a little reinforcement for performing all job responsibilities in a safe manner."

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

Duration of Safety Award Programs and Frequency of Awards

How long should you run a safety award program? 

How frequently should you issue safety awards? 

What kind of safety award should you use?

Whenever a safety professional is considering using awards to stimulate safe work performance these questions invariably come up.  The reason is they are preconditioned to think of “buying” a safety incentive like they would “buy” a training solution.  If you ask anyone selling incentive awards they will come up with a variety of formulas and designs and timelines, some of which may even be based on earning awards for behavior improvement.  Incentive companies are preconditioned to sell you a solution that has finite time parameters.

Our answer to these questions is based on your current need.  As long as you are experiencing workplace behaviors that result in accidents, you should have an award mechanism in place that motivates the workers to change those behaviors.  Research has shown conclusively that:

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

The answers to these important questions can mean the difference between a safety award system that changes behavior to create lasting habits and one that doesn’t provide you anything other than good will when you hand out year end awards to those who were just lucky enough not to get into a accident.

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

Metrics for Leading Indicators

In the past almost all “safety incentives” focused on rewarding workers for simply not having accidents.  These programs essentially rewarded for “after the fact” performance, or “lagging indicators.” They were focused on negatives.

Since OSHA has essentially frowned on any type of safety incentives based on lagging indicators because of non-reporting, almost all attention has been placed on using awards to motivate positive safety behaviors.  Essentially, all approved OSHA programs are now based on improving “leading indicators.”  It would be difficult to discuss any type of safety awards without having a discussion of “leading indicators” which tend to focus on the positive rather than the negative. 

While many feel that “leading indicator” programs tend to be somewhat subjective in nature (observing workers) there are many metrics that can be used to allow for awards that are objective.  Some of them are: 

• The percentage of managers with adequate occupational health and safety training
• The percentage of workers with adequate occupational health and safety training
• The number of workplace inspections
• Frequency of observed safe or unsafe behavior
• The number of occupational health and safety audits performed
• Prevalence of certain health problems
• Work Ability Index, which predicts the likelihood of early retirement
• Employee surveys for safety climate or attitude 

These types of metrics will show you what the company is doing to perform better.  They don’t show the impact. But they are focused on future safety performance and continuous improvement. They are proactive and show what your workers are doing on a regular basis prevent injuries. They also focus on the positive side of safety.

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

Ban the Term “Safety Incentive” From Your Safety Culture

Take the term “safety incentive” out of your thought process when you’re considering any type of award to motivate your workforce to work safely. 

The primary objective of traditional safety incentive programs was to reduce accidents.  These programs were patterned after traditional sales programs that were designed to reward based on incremental sales achievement.  Early safety incentives were also designed this way because safety professionals didn’t want to pay out any type of reward unless and until they had a reduction in accidents. This of course this lead to the non-reporting issue that OSHA is so leery of today and the downfall of many “safety incentive” programs.

Does it really make sense to try to incentivize safety sensitive employees into being safe?  No one really comes to work thinking they will have an accident and it just seems counter intuitive to have a program that says don’t have an accident and we’ll give you an award.  But that’s just what the safety industry did for years.

From our perspective, if you are leaning toward rewarding your workers for performing their job functions in a safe manner; than by all means do so, but use the rewards to continuously and consistently reinforce safe behaviors. By actively recognizing safe performance wherever and whenever possible you are actually doing your best to increase safety awareness and stave off the complacency about hazards that can all too often exist. 

Obviously there are a number of contributing factors that have to be lined up just right for some unplanned accident to happen.  Look at consistent safe performance awards as ways to disrupt those factors.  They can make the difference between a near miss and a horrible accident. 

Like it or not, we all make mistakes.  Some of them get us hurt, but it is almost impossible to engineer all the jobs and performance tasks to such a degree that you will eliminate mistakes.  But you can form correct habits of performing those job functions in a safe manner….not by using safety incentives, but by rewarding safe performance when it happens.

Should it be “Safety Incentives” or “Award Safe Behaviors?”  Just semantics?  Maybe, but awarding safe behaviors is a much better way to communicate this important safety tool.

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