Don’t Measure Accidents Measure Behaviors

We may be getting tired of hearing about the positives and negatives surrounding behavior based safety programs, but whether we like it or not, safety is and has always been a behavioral issue.  Even after companies spend a tremendous amount of time and money improving safety through other means, there always seems to remain those minor (sometimes major) accidents that persist, many of which are triggered by unsafe behaviors. 

Simply put, Behavior Based Safety seeks to increase the number of safe behaviors of all employees which will build safe habits. The combination of all the new safety habits will reduce incidents.

Focusing on unsafe behaviors provides a much better index of ongoing safety performance than accident rates for two reasons.

1.     Accidents are the end result of a causal sequence that is usually triggered by an unsafe behavior.

2.     Unsafe behaviors can be measured in a meaningful way on daily basis.

From the standpoint of using measurements to implement an award system to improve safe behaviors, using the accident rate tends to be reactive while using the unsafe behaviors will always be proactive.

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

What’s Your Most Effective Safety Tool?

Timothy Ludwig, Ph.D., the commissioner for Behavioral Safety Accreditation at the non-profit Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies noted that…

“Behavior is motivated by the consequences it produces especially when that consequence happens right after the behavior with high certainty. Thus, the most effective tools are those that deliver reinforcement to the worker immediately after the safe behavior.”

We would argue that your best safety tool is not the positive reinforcement but those who do the reinforcing, your front line supervisory management.  Without them, you wouldn’t have anyone to reinforce those positive safe behaviors when they happen.  The daily monitoring, encouragement, promotion, training, measure and feedback provided to your employees are critical to the success of any safety program.  If your front line supervisory personnel don’t support any of these efforts your programs won’t be as successful as you want them to be.

When you design your safety award system, don’t forget to include your front line management and provide part of your budget to award them as well.  Their inclusion can guarantee the program success.

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

Why Do Safety Training Programs Fail?

In the world of safety, no matter the topic, the goal of training is often to teach workers how to be more efficient, do their jobs better, and ultimately, work safely. So, why does this sometimes fail?

It often comes down to one of these three things:

Executive Support

When you ask your workers to attend a training session, how often do they simply receive a notice of the training with a requirement to attend? If you want your training to start off on the right foot make sure that your leadership communicates the purpose of the training with a compelling reason to have it and the value it is to the individual and the company. 

Workers will adjust their attitude and attention toward the training based on the attitude and attention placed on it by management. Safety management may have sold executives on the value of the training but individuals are only going to engage with these training tools that they believe will make them do their jobs better and more efficiently.

The Training Contact Lacks Focus

Assuming employees successfully receive communication on the purpose and value of the training, it is important to deliver clear, focused content that builds on the value.

The best world class training with the right trainer and materials will fall short if it really didn’t teach what they needed to know.  Generic feature by feature lectures that provide detailed knowledge is less helpful than giving specific context of how they are going to make the training useful on the job. 

Lack of Feedback and Reinforcement

From a behavioral change perspective, training is just the beginning of the process.  It is the antecedent or “what you want them to do.”  To close the loop you need to give your workers feedback on how they are doing and provide reinforcement when they have shown working knowledge of the material by positive performance. 

Collect and analyze meaningful safety data through inspections and follow up with the workers in a timely basis.  Then recognize them with something tangible to reinforce their positive performance.   Close the behavior loop on your training.  You spend thousands of budget dollars doing it.  Doesn’t it just make sense to spend a few more dollars to reinforce it?

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

Why Gift Cards Make Terrific Safety Awards

The simple answer is that they are easy for you to use with very little administration, they are very cost effective, with almost all of your award budget getting into the hands of your employees, and they provide more choice than virtually any other type of award (except maybe cash.)  And with gift cards you get the family involved.

Almost any report you see on retail buying patterns show consumers continuing to purchase gift cards for their flexibility, while the business embrace them as a way to recognize their employees. 

According to a survey from Market Watch:

·       “Nearly 60 percent of consumers say gift cards are the #1 item they plan to give this year.

·       Consumers named gift cards as the most desired gift to receive this year (5 years in a row)

·       Consumers spend an average of 80-90% more than the face value of the gift cards

·       Over 50% of US employers use gift cards to recognize employee’s contributions

·       Use of gift cards as employee incentives is forecast to increase 23% by 2018

·       15% of U.S. corporations have annual gift card budgets of more than $100K”

Gift cards are the safety awards that your employees want.

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

Employee Engagement Crucial to Safety Program Success

As noted in several of our posts, employee engagement is just as important in the safety world as it is on overall corporate culture.  Just as a hypothesis, people who don't like their job probably don't do a very good job. 

According to Evolve Performance Group, an employee engagement consultant, employees who are engaged on the job and respect their leaders are 48% safer than those who don't.

Before AwardSafety.com was in the business of providing the right kind of behavior based safety awards to increase safe behaviors, we were (and are) also in the business of providing employee recognition awards for a myriad of corporate award solutions.  That field is strongly driven by the current corporate need of encouraging employee engagement.  And some act as if it was the Holy Grail.  The problem is what these consultants don’t tell you….that employee engagement can be a controversial topic mainly because it is hard to define and even harder to tie to business metrics and a quantifiable return on investment.

Regardless, we know that an engaged employees will produce better results. And Safety leaders need personal influence skills to consistently engage their workers. 

Safety training must be more than just informative and comprehensive. It must also ensure that employees feel valuable and understand how they contribute to the organization's overall success. When was the last time you were eager to learn that you're not very good at something...and possibly irrelevant?   

Without knowing your employees current opinions and how to create a sustainable inclusive safety culture you can invalidate the workforce and prevent buy-in. That will unfortunately lead to reduced awareness on the job site. After all, if your employees I consider the safety program to be unclear and condescending, they will not pay attention.  In that sense, employee engagement is extremely important to your overall safety outcomes.  

The core of safety lives within your people, not in your plans, programs, or ideas. Employee engagement should be the foundation on which your safety initiatives should be built. 

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