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
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