Does Worker Safety Produce Customer Satisfaction?

Is it true that safety sensitive workers who have relatively none or no customer facing responsibilities can produce customer satisfaction?  Studies have found that the businesses that report fewer accidents typically have higher customer satisfaction? 

There can be a number of factors that determined the higher rate of customer satisfaction among safety-focused companies. One key factor was the increased engagement and satisfaction levels among the workers in the groups with low-accident rates. These workers felt safe and supported in their efforts, which spilled over to their interactions with the customers.

Engaged businesses also show an increased use of employee reward programs as part of their commitment to engagement which carries over to an increased use of programs recognizing safety.  Acknowledging those who have helped reduce workplace accidents or rewarding teams for reaching certain milestones without an incident can reinforce the importance of safety.

“In an organization with a positive safety climate, where safety does not take a backseat to productivity, employees are likely to believe they have permission to do things right.” “Doing things right is a permeating value in a work unit that is likely to reach into several domains of work behavior, some of which influence the quality of work.”

Reward programs deliver a way for businesses to reinforce a culture centered on safety and following proper methods. This can have a number of benefits for organizations beyond customer satisfaction, and can include aspects that directly influence customer opinion, like product quality, response to service problems and billing.

Yes, worker safety can help produce increased customer satisfaction. 

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

Does OSHA Practice What it Preaches?

We are constantly reviewing articles on the web that mention safety awards in the workplace.  Almost without exception, we see daily mention of at least one company that has received a coveted safety award from an industry association, from OSHA, from the state or city they are in, etc. 

Often these articles mention that the award is based on one of the lagging indicators of safety performance such as number of man hours without an incident, or the reduction in incidents per the man hours worked etc. 

Interestingly, OSHA has been very vocal in repudiating reward and recognition programs that are based on lagging indicators.  It would be nice to see these states, industry associations etc. start to measure the performance of companies on leading indicators.  Maybe they just assume that the workers are just naturally working in a safe manner in order to produce these good results.   Unfortunately that’s not always the case.  A company can have long periods without an incident, but that doesn’t mean that the employees are working in a safe manner, it just means they haven’t had an accident.

For safety awards to be effective, remember to set up a program that will provide continuous and consistent recognition to all employees who work in a safe manner day in and day out.  When you do this you create the habit of working safely.  It this type of behavior that creates hundreds of thousands of work hours performed safely.  The result didn’t drive the achievement.  The achievement was driven by all employees performing the leading indicators in a safe manner. 

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

Safety Incentives Can be Hazardous to Your Health

After all the discussion by OSHA of not approving of traditional safety award programs, we still see many safety incentive programs  designed to reward only the end results, the outcomes, the decrease in incidents of injuries and accidents.  That trend persists and we have posted about the why management likes this type of program.   Mainly they are easier to measure and implement and management thinks they are not paying awards unless they get the results.

Actually the opposite is true.  When you reward only the results, you do nothing to change behavior and simply reward those who were lucky enough not to have an accident over the program period.  When you reward only the result, you incent people to do two things – not report safety violations and not report situations that could lead to safety violations. 

Safety incentives shouldn’t be centered on goal based incentives at all.  They should be based on recognizing employees for how you want them to behave on the job.  Recognizing safe work practices will lead to safe work performance, and ultimately a reduction in incidents. 

Instead of rewarding the result recognize and reward your employee for demonstrating the desired behavior.  When you do this, there will be two critical outcomes.

1. More frequent reporting of unsafe or potentially unsafe conditions before a safety incident occurs
2. More accurate reporting of safety violations since such reporting would itself be recognized.

Frankly this type of system does take a little more time to plan and implement, but the end result will be a safety culture that builds habits of safe behaviors.  And this type of system will cost much less in the long term. 

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

How to Maintain the Success of Your Behavior Based Safety Program

87% of respondents to a survey given by DuPont Sustainable Solutions felt that their behavior based programs were successful.  75% said they were successfully maintaining that success.  These companies then rated their strategies for continuing on that success.

Here are the top ten ways they found to maintain the success of their behavior based safety initiatives: 

10. Build a successful safety committee the most important element of which is the involvement of front line supervisory management.    

9. Don’t Link Discipline to an observation  

8.  Periodic Refresher Training

7. Collect and evaluate the data by developing a good database of leading indicators

6. Communicate and use the data on an often basis

5. Recognize employee participation

4. Recognize Employee Contributions

3. Supervisory Involvement

2. Share and discuss specific observations

1. Top Management Commitment

Executive management has the power to make or break the safety program. The most successful and enduring programs have top management commitment. Get them involved in kick-off sessions and in the initial training with their subordinates.  When top management shows and believes that safety is important to them, it will be believed and be important to all levels of personnel.

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