The Journey to Zero!

 “Whether you think you can, or you think you can't - you're right.” – Henry Ford

That quote has been referred to so many times, it may have lost some of its power, but it is just as true today as it was when Henry Ford first said it. Our beliefs dictate our effort. When it comes to keeping workers safe, we need a goal of zero accidents.

A good place to start the journey to zero accidents is to uncover those unsafe behaviors that lead to accidents.  This can start with a well-defined communications effort to explain your goal and what you are going to implement to achieve it.  It’s important to set forth the targets of incremental improvement you are seeking and consistently provide feedback of the performance to the workforce.  Tell them what you want and tell them how they are doing, as often as possible.

How many unsafe behaviors are acceptable?  That goal must be zero. When management and the workforce focus on eliminating unsafe behaviors, amazing things can happen.  You create the habit of safety. 

When communicating you goal in this manner you can focus on identifying the leading indicators (unsafe behaviors) that occur in your workplace.  They can include behaviors like:  

• Short Cuts
• Snap Decisions
• Complacency
• Unsafe Behavior
• Unsafe Conditions

 This process is the same used by the Japanese car manufacturers so many years ago to improve productivity.  It was unquestionably the reason that launched them to prominence in the auto industry.  It is called Kaizen (improvement) and refers to activities that continuously improve all functions and involve all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers.

Henry Ford had it right. It begins with belief that if you think you can achieve zero accidents, or believe you can’t achieve zero accidents - you're right.”

What do you believe?

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers that can help you build a zero based goal please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

Can a $5 Tee Shirt Really Produce Safety Results?

Many safety managers ask a great question …

“Do safety incentives really produce results?”

There are at least two schools of thought voiced by safety managers:

1. Tangibly appreciating and recognizing individual behaviors that improve specific safety performance and outcomes have a measurable and dramatic impact on the overall safety and financial performance of a company.

2. We pay our people to function in a safe manner and get the results the company wants.  They are already paid to work safe.

Before you determine which answer is the right one for your organization, there are certain aspects you need to consider.  These are founded in the answer to the following key questions and the criteria stated below …

Key Questions:

Does your organization actively measure, analyze, and broadcast safety performance and outcomes in terms of …

Ø The related costs of workers compensation claims.

Ø Healthcare costs increases or decreases due to incidents and accidents.

Ø The impact on operating expenses due to lost time and added labor costs.

Ø Is there a well-communicated and understood correlation between safety behaviors, performance, and the overall financial performance of your organization?

Can you relate the personal safety behaviors of your employees on-the-job performance to the above four safety issues?

If the answer to the above is YES! You are in a great position to measurably and expediently improve your safety behaviors, performance, and related outcomes by implementing a behavior based awards program using positive reinforcement to change behavior. 

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

The Baby and the Bathwater

Traditionally cash was used more often than any other award to promote safe work performance.  It was almost always given to workers for not having an accident while on the job.  It was given monthly or quarterly and often at year end as a bonus. It was and is most likely the key reason why the non-reporting of incidents exists within the subject of safety incentives.

Today whenever we consult with a client who uses cash as a safety award we always ask the same question:  “If you had to do it over again would you still use cash?  The answer almost always is “no.” 

Simply put, when safety management requested budgets or when executive management, because of high safety costs, wanted to use an “incentive” for workers to reduce incidents, they didn’t want to spend the money without a return.  Logically, the programs were structured from the back end….no incidents = cash bonus. And when the bonus was high enough, it was only human nature for some to hide injuries because they didn’t want to lose the money.  It was a vicious circle…and was the reason negative feelings about safety incentives still persists.

But don't stop using awards because of the negative feelings toward cash award programs or programs that were poorly designed.  Using non cash positive consequences to reinforce behavior change is a proven valid performance strategy.  It is especially valid in rewarding safe behaviors.  It would be silly to think about a safety supervisor walking around a plant or job site with a pocket full of dollars to recognize safe behaviors.  But there are many ways to use small awards to reinforce behaviors. From our experience, we’ve also learned that it doesn’t have to be much.  An array of company branded merchandise items (caps and tees) or gift cards as low as $5 or $10 are prevalent.  And often, the recognition can be just a simple “Thank You.”

In fact research from the Incentive Federation has uncover exactly that:

A small, positive, immediate consequence has more impact on behavior than a large, future and uncertain one.

By consistently and continuously reinforcing behavior change with small amounts of awards, you will change behavior.

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

An Ounce of Prevention

In my opinion, safety professionals have one of the most difficult yet satisfying careers there is.  They spend their time working with employees to help them get through the day and back to their loved ones unharmed.  They are some the hardest working people I know.  When incidents occur, their hours can be 24/7, and they constantly live with the always present chance of have to deal with serious injury or even death.  They balance executive demands with the reality of corporate budgets.  They need to be tough on workers yet show them the respect and kindness they deserve.  The great safety leaders spend most of their time thinking about and trying to prevent injuries. 

If you ask any safety professional, they will all tell you that preventing accidents is far less costly than fixing them.  Just as productivity experts have been saying for years, that improving productivity depends on predicting and preventing process failures rather than spending the bulk of your resources after failures have occurred.  So to, companies need to predict and eliminate hazards that can result in injuries.

Safety incentive systems should focus on rewarding the prediction and prevention of incidents.  By reinforcing prevention in a positive manner on an ongoing basis, you can change behavior and decrease accidents.  Prevention is far less costly than correction. 

All injuries may or may not be preventable.  But all bad safety habits can be changed by using the proven tenets of behavior based safety and then rewarding the change with positive reinforcement.  In the case of safety, the old adage holds true.  

 An ounce of prevention can save a pound of cure.

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

Why BBS Became Unpopular

When BBS first became popular, consultants, training, operating systems and other processes to affect it abounded.  Everyone wanted in on the new phase of making employees work safer and thought they had the right method to make it work and make it effective. 

The problem was that some (if not many) of the programs implemented were clearly subpar.  They didn’t work, they were costly, and frankly they caused frustration and resentment among management and the workforce.  Many of these programs were not based on the science of behavior and became negative when a “blame the worker” mentality developed. This was completely opposite of what the true meaning and direction of what BBS should have been using positive consequences to motivate and reward behavior change. 

The entire “positive consequences” piece of BBS may have also worked to help derail it.  Not having a definitive idea of what “positive consequences” really means, it was left up to the designing companies to determine what “positive consequence” to use.  This has been a problem in the safety industry for years.  Should you use an award for improved safety performance?  How often, how costly?  What award to use??  Sometimes just a sincere “thank you” for an improved safety behavior is enough to sustain the behavior.  It doesn’t always have to be a physical award.  The further stigma of traditional safety incentives and erroneous press from OSHA added to the frustration. 

The combination of those not fluent in the science of behavior with others of varying knowledge of award systems made for designing programs that failed from the start.  These failed programs also included flaws focusing on at-risk behavior and corrective feedback rather than a focus on strengthening safe behavior through positive strategies. And of course those who said they “tried BBS and it didn’t work” were justified to never do one again.  It resulted in the rise of anti-BBS sentiment in some organizations.

This is very unfortunate as BBS can be a very rewarding business strategy that produces excellent results.  To reject it because it was designed poorly is like rejecting a doctor’s prescription because you didn’t take if correctly.  Both are scientific and BBS has been proven effective but it won’t work well if it is not implemented properly.

No one really argues that sustained safety improvement requires changing behavior of your workers.  But it also requires changing the behavior of executives, managers, supervisors and front line employees alike. Behavior is how we accomplish all of the things we need to accomplish in safety. BBS is based on the proven science of behavior—the science that provides the strategies to motivate all the behaviors we need to create and sustain a safe workplace. Human error is inevitable and looking to systems like BBS can minimize the error.  Applying negative consequences will only serve to reduce the behavior you are seeking in the first place. 

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

Face to Face Safety

When you want to influence someone the best way to do it is face-to-face. When you want to build trust and loyalty with your workers, make time to talk with them.  Face-to- Face is the right way to build a safety culture. 

Behavior based safety is arguably one of the best ways to change poor safety habits into good ones.  It has been successful because it is done face to face.  Cultures with exceptional safety cultures have management that often visits with their employees about safety.  Great leaders want employees to know safety is important to management. They want to make it clear to them that they never want to put safety at risk in some attempt to drive performance.  If good performance is to be sustainable it must be done with an eye on zero accidents.

When management doesn’t want to engage their employees face-to-face about safety they send the message that “Safety Isn’t Important.”  Great safety cultures begin when you give a consistent and continuous message about the importance of safety.  Do it early and often.

Here are some examples of how to reinforce your safety message:

·       Begin new hire orientation with your explanation of your safety culture. 

·       All meetings began with safety as the first item on the agenda.

·       Regardless of the department, start every meeting with a review of safety efforts and progress. 

·       Start all training, employee appraisals and introduction of projects with a talk on safety.

·       Schedule time for supervisors, managers, etc. to be in the field or on the job and perform face-to-face safety talks

The Gallup organization and other poll groups have questioned employees about how they want to receive information at work and what their preference is for communication.

Face-to-face is always the number one answer.

Employees know management only invests time on what’s important. If their immediate boss doesn't regularly set aside time to talk safety, it's hard not to get the impression that safety doesn't matter to them.

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

The Fogg Behavior Model

In 2007, BJ Fogg, PhD,  a Behavior Scientist at Stanford University, solved an important puzzle about human behavior, and called it appropriately the “Fogg Behavior Model."  As Behavior Based Safety is such an often discussed and important topic in the safety industry, we thought looking at this model from that perspective might be interesting.

​Fogg’s expressed his model as: 

​B=MAP

The solution is deceptively simplifies and shows that three elements must converge at the same moment for a behavior to occur: Motivation, Ability, and a Prompt. When a behavior does not occur, at least one of those three elements is missing. Fogg maintains that you can learn to think about behavior in this way in two minutes and that it applies to all types of behavior, in all cultures, for people at any age. It's universal. 

​

The Fogg Behavior Model supposedly makes it easier to understand behavior in general. What was once a fuzzy mass of psychological theories now becomes organized and specific when viewed through the FBM. 

​The FBM highlights three principal elements, each of which has sub-components. Specifically, the FBM outlines Core Motivators (Motivation), Simplicity Factors (Ability), and the types of Prompts.

Motivation:  There are three Core Motivators: Sensation, Anticipation, and Belonging. Each of these has two sides: pleasure/pain, hope/fear, acceptance/rejection. 

Ability:  In order to perform a target behavior, a person must have the ability to do so.

Prompt: Tells people to “do it now”. Without a Prompt, the target behavior will not happen. Sometimes a Prompt can be external, like an alarm sounding. Other times, the Prompt can come from our daily routine: Walking through the kitchen may trigger us to open the fridge. 

From a safety perspective let’s assume that your various motivators are in place, and all the necessary training to ensure ability is ongoing. At that point the safe behavior will not happen unless you have some kind of prompt. To do so, you need to ask people to do simple things. Once achieved, the simple behavior then opens the door to harder behaviors.

This may be an oversimplification of FBM, but it seems that it can all start with simple communications, with prompts toward more and more safe behaviors using positive reinforcement at each step of the way. 

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

Incidents v Accidents v Near Misses

Capturing and analyzing all data related to accidents and incidents are how safety programs are most often judged, but it’s only part of the picture.

While tracking all incidents is a critical aspect of managing your safety performance data, tracking near misses can also have a surprisingly big impact on safety performance.  Many safety professionals know that focusing efforts on near misses can result in reducing future incidents.  

Why Smaller Incidents Matter

Near misses and other less serious incidents might not seem like important events to track, but they have a surprisingly big impact.

Non-accident incidents matter.  Consider the Loss Causation Theory that discusses the implications of the cost of an injury and other costs that stem from that accident.  In 1985 Bird & Germaine depicted an iceberg as a way to show the true costs of accidents.  The tip of the iceberg represented $1 in direct medical and illness costs, followed underneath by many other uninsured ledger costs which amounted to another $5 to $50, and under that more uninsured misc. costs of $1 to $3.  In essence for every dollar spent dealing with an injury, there is anywhere from $6 to $53 in unrelated expenses.

Another popular theory developed by Herbert Heinrich in the 1930's used a pyramid to show

how incidents and accidents relate to each other in terms of both frequency and severity.  The relationship depicted in the pyramid reveals that severe accidents and injuries are often the culmination of several less serious incidents.

By taking steps to reduce the number of risky behaviors and near misses, we are also preventing serious injuries. Conversely, employers or safety professionals who dismiss or don't pay attention to near misses can expect the rate of recordable injuries, lost work days, and fatalities to increase.

Many safety professionals today use small cost effective awards to motivate their workers to report near misses.  The award costs are small; the potential savings that come from stopping risky behaviors at the root can be tremendous!

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

To Prevent All Injuries…You Need a Safety Angel

I’ve been involved in the safety industry from the perspective of safety incentives for many years, and have heard the statement “All injuries can be prevented” argued for decades.  At times the statement evolves into “All injuries can and should be prevented.”  That would be nice if it were true.

I suppose in theory these may be partially true, but in reality countless millions of injuries occur every day, everywhere and this has been happening forever.  Injuries are pervasive, but perhaps it’s the “everywhere” and “forever” that’s missing from a lot of the current theory regarding accidents and injuries on the job.

In order for the statement "All injuries can be prevented" to be true, everybody would have to be watching, doing and thinking about what they’re doing whenever they are moving (tough to get injured while you’re sleeping?).  Because once they move or start to move, the only thing that tells them what they could be moving into is their eyes or their mind, with the exception of planes and ships that also use radar and sonar.

Many years ago I asked a very experienced safety veteran what he would get if he could have anything he wanted to help prevent accidents; his answer was a “safety angel” on the shoulder of every one of his employees all day every day constantly whispering in the ear of his people to “Be Safe!”  Then he said even with that, there would still be accidents.  None of us could prove we have been using our eyes and our mind 100 percent of the time throughout the entire course of a business day.  And it’s at the one instant when we don’t that the accident happens. 

To err is human; we all make mistakes some more than others.  And everyone has made injury-causing mistakes and errors when our eyes or mind is not on task. How badly we got hurt is usually a function of luck.  Our behavior dictates whether we have an accident.  Not having our minds and our eyes on the task dictates whether we have an accident. 

You can argue that all injuries, as they relate to people being totally watchful and aware, are preventable.  Or is that just the angel on the shoulder?

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

The Essential Elements of a Behavior Based Safety Initiative

It is evident by years of working with safety professionals that BBS means many different things to many different people…and that BBS programs always vary.

In doing a Google search for “developing a behavior based safety program” we came up with 125 million results in less than a second!  Every conceivable type of safety training company, software company, safety consultant and safety award company seem to have an answer.  The most common form of program appears to be those that encourage management and workers to evaluate their own behaviors with some kind of measurement and communicate between themselves. 

As BBS is essentially a human behavior issue, we went to a reliable resource on the subject, Dr. Aubrey Daniels, who has been researching human behavior of the
American working for decades.  His emphasis and experience has been about performance improvement in both safety and other corporate objectives.  We found, that Dr. Daniels had set forth a structure of the essentials necessary to make a BBS program effective.  We thought you might find this list informative.   His essential steps are:

To implement a BBS you must use a process grounded in the science of behavior, which include understanding antecedents,  behaviors, consequences and feedback

Carefully choose those observable behaviors that have a significant impact on safety in your company. 

You need targeted checklists of a few behaviors at a time to increase frequency of observations and feedback reinforcement

You must have trained and knowledgeable observers, those who are expert in doing do similar work and can provide quality feedback

Record all hazards (large or small) on checklists to ensure they get reported, and to generate conversations about hazard remediation.

Identify critical behaviors at each level, including managers and supervisors, to ensure everyone is working in concert to improve safety performance

Be able to analyze the system impact on safety. Organizations that understand behavior scientifically can detect and correct system issues that influence behavior adversely, the more you ask about what is observed, the more you learn how to set up others for success.

Use positive reinforcement correctly, and it strengthens safety behaviors and builds an engaged, reporting culture.

Of this list, the item that we find is the most misunderstood is the use of positive reinforcement.  Everyone has their own idea of what positive reinforcement should be, and it runs the gamut from just saying thanks, well done, to a sweepstakes program for the use of a new pickup truck for a year, or ($1 million to the winner…yes this really happened!)

Regardless of what you do, you need to do it. The more continuous and consistent the reinforcement you do, the more likely you are to build habits of the right behavior.  And experience has shown us that  it doesn’t take large awards to get this done. 

How much of your budget is devoted to safety training?  Doesn’t it just make sense to spend part of it on awards the reinforce this training?

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

  

The Truth About Building Safety Habits

We have long been a proponent of using continuous diminimous awards within BBS as positive reinforcement to change safe performance into habits.  Following is a post on Aubrey Daniels International by Tim Nolan, Ph.D., a trusted advisor to business and organizational leaders. This post gives you some reasons from a psychological perspective of we feel that BBS awards can be so effective.  We hope you find it informative.

The Truth About Building Habits: No You Don't Have to Do This Forever

Many times in the course of working with clients, they hit a point of realization about using a scientific approach to behavior on the job, and it sometimes sounds like this: “You mean I have to do THIS for EVERY behavior?”  The short answer is yes and no. Let me explain.

The answer is yes in that using a scientific approach to manage behavior is simply a more precise way of doing what most leaders spend their time doing anyway. As long as any of us are in the business of dealing with the behavior of others (which is most people in the workplace today), then we will be doing some version of THIS. Applying behavioral tools like pinpointing, shaping, feedback and positive reinforcement are simply more precise and deliberate ways of doing what leaders, managers, teachers, coaches, parents, etc., are doing in the course of their everyday interactions.

The answer is also no in the sense that not every behavior requires the same level of attention and even the ones that do, don’t require that attention forever. The value of pinpointing is that it helps narrow the vast universe of behaviors that are occurring all the time, down to a few that are mission-critical for some result or outcome we are trying achieve.

Even when focused on just a few key behaviors, it’s not necessary to stay focused on them forever. The intent in focusing on those behaviors is to turn them into habits that reliably occur with little or no additional attention from anyone.  Once those habits have formed, they are maintained by naturally occurring prompts, reminders and consequences in the workplace or in your environment.  Those behaviors become part of the culture or just how we do things here.

In a more technical sense, when we target a few pinpointed behaviors we are arranging planned antecedents and consequences to initiate and maintain a desired frequency for each behavior. As that behavior reaches a desired, reliable frequency or specificity, other naturally occurring antecedents and consequences begin to take hold and maintain that behavior. When that happens we tend to say that a habit has formed.

A simple example is wearing a seatbelt while driving or riding in a car. The first few times in a car, the act of fastening a seat belt isn’t natural or particularly comfortable. But antecedents or prompts (e.g., seat belt chime from car, reminders from other people), will result in people fastening it. The feel of the belt on the body, the sound of the click as it fastens, the termination of the chime function—are all forms of consequences.  Over time, this pattern of antecedents and consequences becomes fairly routine, to the point where driving or riding in a car without a seatbelt feels awkward or uncomfortable. The bottom line: seatbelt wearing has become a habit that no longer relies on instructions, laws, public service announcements, etc., to be maintained.

The important thing about habits is that they tend to stick with almost no additional effort on anyone’s part.  They simply become how you do things.  So in that sense the answer is no, you don’t have to do this forever. You only have to do this until you have turned pinpoints into habits.

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

Take the Subjectivity Out Of BBS Programs

As part of our ongoing program activity with our clients, we gather actual Leading Indicators that our clients use in their safety award systems.  The list that we have created is by no means meant to be an exhaustive combination of every possible leading indicator that have or can be used in BBS award systems.  It is designed to be a thought starter for indicators a company can use when they are considering moving from a traditional lagging indicator award system, “prize at the end”, to a program using safety awards to create safe behaviors and then turn them into habits. 

Our list is very simplistic when compared to H&S statistics and processes which cover data such as H&S tours, H&S meetings, training, induction, inspections, audits, drills etc. Those types of Objectively Verifiable Indicators (OVIs) are beyond our purview and allow clients to evaluate performance and identify gaps/malfunctions instantly.  But if you are going to move from one type of award structure to another, you need to start somewhere.

When you create OVIs in measurable and observable terms, they provide the basis for individual performance measurement suitable for project monitoring and evaluation.  They become the parameters of change or of results, indicating as to what extent the project objectives have been achieved.  They form the perfect structure from which to launch your award system and help your employees become successful in achieving results and earning awards.

Once you have achieved results in these OVIs, say for example over a six month period, it is then time for some new ones.  Don’t fall into the trap that everything is good, go find something that isn’t. 

The incentive industry has known for years that consistently and continuously rewarding behavior change with minimal awards will over the long run change behavior.  If you would like to see a paper on an award system that was designed for just these types of programs, we would be happy to send you an electronic copy.

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

The Relationship between Minor and Serious injuries

You can debate the validity of Heinrich’s accident ratios and numbers or the re-evaluation of them by Frank Bird in his Industrial Accident Prevention, but the bottom line in these discussions is that there are three important things we can learn from these powerful concepts:

First - there is a distinct mathematical relationship between incidents of similar type and how severe there are.  You can use technology to keep track of where your company is in relation to industry standards and even calculate this ratio for yourself. 

Second – it is not plant, equipment or location which accounts for the majority of safety incidents but employee behavior. 

Third – by reducing overall frequency of workplace injuries the number of severe or fatal injuries will consequently reduce.

Too Simplistic? 

Maybe, as there are scores of mathematicians and engineers out there who would love to delve deeply into these theories and discover the root causes of the minor injuries and deal with these then to uncover a proportionate effect on serious injuries. 

Ultimately the vast majority of underlying causes of minor and serious injuries have one thing in common: someone’s behavior. These may be the behaviors of operators, supervisors, managers or directors – or more likely a combination of all of these in a domino effect.

Sure, anyone can argue the validity of these models.  But they provide us with the very important point that by reporting near misses and minor injuries we can learn the lessons of why they occurred.  Most companies put too much focus on the top of the triangle (reactive) and not enough on the bottom (proactive).

As long as we don’t take these models too literally or get hung up on the numbers, they remain a very valuable safety tool.

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

Creating Safety Habits

If you are trying to create safe work practices consider the following:

·       On average, an action becomes an "automatic" habit after 66 days of doing it

·       The subconscious mind rebels against big changes, but you can do it with gradual shifts

·       The more familiar a task is, the less scary it is. 

Incentive science has known for years that when you continuously and consistently reinforce behavior change with sincere appreciation and awards, you will change long term behavior.  It also teaches us that a small, positive, immediate consequence (the award) has more impact on behavior that a large, future and uncertain one.

Most safety award programs today aren’t effective in the long run.  You can spend a lot of money on employees for getting lucky for not having an accident during your program period, but they haven’t changed their behavior at all.  And that is very frustrating and the main reason many companies forego safety awards altogether.

Behavior based safety is based on the principle of creating habits and when efficiently implemented it can be very effective.

If you want to create new safety habits reinforce those positive behaviors whenever you see them.  The reinforcement doesn’t have to be an award of any tangible value; you can realize a great deal of change by simply recognizing and thanking your employees for the effort.  After repeating that recognition several times, you can then reinforce them with a small tangible award such as a gift card.

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

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. 

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