Build it and They Will Come!

When you think about it, recognizing an employee for safe work behavior should be a simple (and happy) thing to do.   Throw out the complicated stuff and just tell your managers to simply recognize their employees for doing a good job whenever and wherever possible.  Measure the managers to make sure it gets done, and give them a budget to do it.  It’ll save you a lot of money and time and you’ll wind up with a much better safety program and more safety conscious employees.

Don’t incent safety; instead base your program on changing employee behavior and rewarding safe actions.  This will encourage that behavior to be repeated.  This simple approach will build a culture of safety which will reduce incidents.  The best approach to employee recognition is almost always the simplest one. 

One of the biggest problems with traditional safety incentive programs is that they are usually back end loaded and depend on a reduction of incidents of injuries or accidents before an employee will earn an award.  At that point, almost nothing has been done to influence the behavior of the individual to perform in a safe manner.  When they earn an award it is often because of luck, not because of cognitively trying to change their behaviors. 

Unfortunately for some managers it’s the “Field of Dreams” syndrome…build it and they will come.  Having analyzed hundreds of safety incentives we know that these back end award designs exist because some safety professionals have a difficult time convincing management to budget for safety awards on the front end.  They don’t mind spending money if they get the result.  They want the guarantee of cost savings before the lay out the cash for the award.  And frankly they want a program that is easy to implement.  Don’t have an accident – get a prize.  That is a very myopic approach to safety awards.

Unfortunately it is just this kind of program that OSHA does not condone because it’s just these kinds of programs that generate the need for employees to hide incidents of injuries so they can receive the award.  This is even worse when the program is designed around team performance. No one wants to let an incident be reported that will result in their team losing the award. 

So if you want a safety incentive program that will provide long term behavior change and take luck out of the equation…use the simple approach.  Recognize your workers for displaying positive safe behavior whenever you see it. 

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