Don’t Measure Accidents

This title is a little inane to be in a discussion of safety. Of course you have to measure accidents; it’s one of the ways that tells you if your organization has been safe.  But is it the most important one?

What Gets Measured Gets Done…What Gets Rewarded Gets Repeated has been a mantra in the incentive awards industry for as long as I can remember. We all know that if you let people know you are measuring them, and reporting on that measurement to them and others, then you are likely to get the individual to at least work to achieve the objective.  And when you consistently apply positive reinforcement to positive performance, you can make that performance a habit.   Obviously it’s not as easy as that, but it’s certainly a good place to begin if you’re thinking of planning any kind of incentive program.  The key here is that you are rewarding a behavior, not a result.

Measuring performance is an important part of any managerial process and forms the basis for continuous improvement. Measuring safety performance is absolutely critical.  But measuring safety without providing feedback to your workers is like bowling through a curtain.  In our opinion if you want to improve safety performance and the overall effectiveness of your safety program, you need to change the way you measure it.  Observe the behaviors that effect safe performance

For years, organizations measured safety performance by analyzing injuries that had already occurred, such as frequency and severity, first aid injury rate, OSHA recordables, LTA’s….all “milestone” achievements.  Because of the tremendous expense, Worker’s Compensation costs were common points of analyzation.  So, following the incentive industry trend of rewarding results, safety incentives were given in the form “milestone” awards as well.

When OSHA began to express concern the some incentive programs had the potential to encourage workers to hide injuries, many of these “milestone” award programs were discontinued….many, but not all.  We continually see companies that have these types of programs.  And frankly, when we analyze these programs, the awards budgets exceed the budgets for behavior based programs that we implement today.

It’s difficult (if not impossible) to find an incentive company suggest rewarding for milestone achievement, yet many of these programs still exist.  Why?  A main reason is the reluctance of budget setting without a guarantee of a return on the expense.  However, this concern doesn’t seem to exist when budgeting for other pieces of the safety program such as training.  

Isn’t it time to consider the expense of rewarding positive safety behavior with continuous and consistent awards an economically sound way to prevent injuries and accidents?  We’ve changed the measurement, let’s change the attitude on positive reinforcement.

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