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
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