Tuesday, August 21, 2018

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

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