Have a Wonderful and Safe Holiday Season

All of us at AwardSafety wish you and your family a safe Holiday Season and Healthy and Happy New Year.

Thank you for your support and the trust you’ve placed on us to provide you with the best safety award system to achieve your objectives.

When Should You Implement a Safety Incentive Award Program?

Before you determine when you should implement a safety award program, you should first decide if you really have a safety problem that can be addressed by changing the behavior of your workers.  That may sound obvious, but it isn’t always understood. 

Companies often confuse recognition awards for ongoing safety performance with safety incentives to motivate performance. They are both very valid tools to use in growing and maintaining a positive safety culture, but not necessarily interchangeable.  Motivating workers to perform (behave) in a safe manner requires all the pieces of the behavior change equation:  knowing what you want them to do, measuring how they do it, providing a positive consequence when it is completed, and then giving feedback.   If all you want to do is maintain your current positive safety performance, then providing safety recognition in the form of the awards can also be helpful. 

Many of the hundreds of “safety incentive programs” we’ve seen over the years are not safety incentives at all.  They are periodic recognition awards for overall safety performance.  Clients think recognition awards are motivating the safety performance, but they are not.  These programs don’t really effect behavior change.  Unless the behavior is changed and becomes a habit, it won’t produce a long term effect.  In these programs workers were lucky enough to have been given a recognition award for ‘being safe’. This is the simple reason why many safety professionals feel that safety incentives do not produce any long term benefits.  In actuality they weren’t designed to do so; they weren’t safety incentives at all. 

Safety recognition awards can be a valuable and strategic tool in your safety culture.  These are essentially safety communication devices that add to all of your safety programs to keep safety top of mind.  They become the ribbon that you wrap around your safety culture.  When they are used to keep safety at the forefront of your workplace, they can be effective. But they are designed to say thanks for the results, they don’t motivate workers to change behavior.

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

Do Safety Incentives Really Produce Results?

Many safety managers ask a great question …

“Do safety incentives really produce results?”

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

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.

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 question and the criteria stated below …

A Key Question:

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

• The related costs of workers compensation claims.
• Healthcare costs increases or decreases due to incidents and accidents.
• The impact on operating expenses due to lost time and added labor costs.
• Is there a well-communicated and understood correlation between safety behaviors, performance, and the overall financial performance of your organization?
• Do all of the individuals in your organization relate their personal safety behaviors on-the-job and daily 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 safety incentive program using a valuable safety appreciation and recognition system like Award of choice. A safety incentive program based on the above criteria will provide tangible appreciation and results based on measurable improvements … and these results can be significant! 

If the answer to the above is No, Not Sure, Sometimes,  A Little, or Maybe …you might want to consider postponing your award program and start first by making improvements to items as noted above!

Tangible Safety Incentive Programs Address and Go Beyond the Safety Behaviors Addressed by Basic Compensation Plans!

          In numerous studies the number one driver that motivates people to excel is Appreciation for a job well done! and Recognition for making and taking that extra effort!

A safety program can be a highly effective performance improvement tool by answering, addressing, and linking three critical elements in getting the job done!

1^st

Do the individuals clearly understand the defined safety goals and the impact their safety behaviors have on the required functional and financial outcomes of the company?

2^nd

Do the individuals understand how he / she links and is connected to the defined safety goals and the impact their safety behaviors have on the required functional and financial outcomes?

3^rd

Does she / he realize and live every day the fact that her / his day-to-day safety behaviors on-the-job directly affect the ability of the organization to achieve the defined safety goals and the impact their safety behaviors have on the required functional and financial outcomes … And, does she / he understand how her / his safety behaviors are critical to their individual and team’s overall well-being and future security?

When this linkage and understanding is clear, your coworkers actively and aggressively seek ways to continuously improve their safety behaviors, performance, and company outcomes.  Appreciating and tangibly recognizing your coworkers for doing so is one of the keys to improving and sustaining safety performance and positive outcomes for all!

Experience shows that safety award systems have, do and will produce results!  But there is a caveat.  For your safety program to have the best chance at success it needs to be properly designed, implemented and communicated. 

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

Do Away with Safety Raffles

Safety Raffles have been around since someone with limited funds decided to give an award to employees who performed safely on the job.  From a purely promotional standpoint they did get a lot of attention, but from a motivational standpoint they did little to incent behavior change.  In fact, raffles often brought about negative feeling among the participants for a variety of reasons. When the item raffled was of a significantly higher value, these negative feelings were magnified.  Examples:

You often see company pickup trucks raffled to the winning safety participants on a construction site.  It is fun for the one who wins, not so much for the 588 who didn’t.  How about when a very large trucking company put the names of any driver who did not have an accident that year in a hat and the winner got $1 million in cash.  There were close to 20,000 names in that hat. Do you really think they got any behavior change for that expense?  Just recently United Airlines tried something about as foolish to distribute limited bonus dollars to handful of employees via a lottery.  The HR dept. was pilloried because of it.

Safety raffle programs are used because the company doesn’t have the budget to implement an effective safety award system.  But it’s counter-productive. It gets no results and wastes the money anyway.  Our advice when you are considering any kind of raffle to motivate safe behavior is save your money.  All it really just becomes is an expensive safety communications tool.

The most successful behavior based safety programs recognize employees every time they perform in a safe manner.  Until now, there were no safety award systems that could provide this type of performance recognition and do it within normal budget parameters. 

The On the Spot award card has changed that.  It allows you to issue award cards for safety performance with low or no cost per card and still have a highly motivational program.

By offering a safety award system that uses a combination of winning cards redeemable for the most popular gift cards, and non-winning cards that help to reinforce behavior, you can do away with traditional sweepstakes or raffles that do little to change behavior.  How you combine these two cards depends solely on your budget requirements. 

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

Everybody’s an Expert on Safety Award Systems

Last year we were involved in a diverse discussion on safety award systems on LinkedIn.  A member of the group asked for help and some ideas on safety awards.  The comments he received from the group, mainly safety managers, supervisors, safety specialists etc., many and varied.

What interested us, but did not surprise us, was the breadth of comments…some seemingly hostile, some with a respectful disbelief in safety incentives and some with complete confidence in safety awards as a viable means to reduce injuries and accidents. 

There are at least a couple of reasons why there is such a wide divergence of opinions of safety programs.

First many safety programs are implemented on a DIY basis by individuals who are not versed on the tactics used to produce and implement successful incentive programs.  Unfortunately when shortcutting those tactics they set themselves up to fail.  A vehement distrust of safety award systems can often be traced back to poorly designed and implemented programs, not the fault of safety awards as a whole.   Who’s the fault in a car accident, the car or the driver?

Second, the award industry has many different types of award companies and deliverables, with some having less competence in implementing successful safety award programs than others.  That combination can lead to programs with limited success or even programs that produce no significant result for the money spent. 

The combination of these two reasons often leads to disgruntled safety managers who are less inclined to implement a safety program ever again, and that’s a shame because they are a viable strategy to use within any overall safety effort, especially those that use minimal awards on a consistent and continuous basis to reward workers for positive safety behavior change.

Countless studies have shown that award programs properly planned and implemented, can be very effective at achieving dramatic results.  The International Society for Performance Improvement conducted the most comprehensive study ever on the effectiveness of the incentive industry and showed conclusively that these types of programs produce results.

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

Have a Wonderful and Safe Holiday Season

All of us at AwardSafety wish you and your family a safe Holiday Season and Healthy and Happy New Year.

Thank you for your support  and the trust you’ve placed on us to provide you with the best safety award system to achieve your objectives.

Do Safety Awards Really Produce Results?

Over the years there have been at least two schools of thought voiced to us by safety professional on the subject question:

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

2. 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.

 We have never seen empirical research stating accurately that safety incentives produce results. Frankly we don’t feel that you ever will.  Simply because as we have stated many times, that you can’t incentivize safety.  That would be the same as asking if employee rewards really produces a positive change in employee engagement.  You can’t incentivize that either, because there are way too many pieces to either of those puzzles and they all have to be working in tandem to be effective

We do know that you can change poor safety behavior and replace it with positive safety behavior by using rewards as positive consequences for making the change.  We do know that the reward industry in a wide ranging research project showed…

A small, positive, immediate consequence has more impact

on behavior than a large, future and uncertain one.

And

By consistently and continuously reinforcing behavior

change with small amounts of awards, you will change behavior

Stop looking at safety incentives to achieve the lagging safety goals traditionally used for safety incentive programs and substitute it with a a safety award system to recognize continuous safety improvement

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

Stop Focusing on Safety Results

Thankfully, almost all discussions these days on safety awards concern motivating safe behaviors and focus on changing conditions that can influence future accidents and injuries.  In fact a well-designed safety award system won’t even focus on the results other than to point toward what can happen when your entire workforce is performing their job functions in a safe manner. 

In a safety summit we attended earlier in the year, a speaker presented a wonderful analogy of how to view your safety culture in relation to the results you want to achieve. It is also a great way to explain leading vs lagging indicators and how to leverage leading indicators to promote a safety culture. His comparison used an example of a football game. Allow us to paraphrase from our memory:

Picture a football game.  When you watch it you focus on the field, on the ebb and flow of the players, the offense and defensive play calling and how the other team reacts to that positioning, down and distance, the field conditions, the weather, etc.  He mentioned that everything that was happening or was influencing the play made up all the leading indicators of the future results that you want.  If you are going to have a good chance to win, the teams and the coaches must continuously adjust their strategies based on all of these factors.

The scoreboard, on the other hand, shows us all the lagging indicators, such as the number of points scored during the game, how many yards were gained or lost in the last play etc. Once points are on the board, they're not coming off. Once the clock runs out, the teams (usually) can’t do anything to change the score.  If you spend all of your time fixated on the score, you won’t be able to manage the game.

The same applies to a safety culture.  The analogy helps us understand why safety programs cannot be driven by lagging indicators.  After the game you can look at the scoreboard and in retrospect say you should have done this or that differently, but it won’t change the outcome. 

But before and during the game you can have your “hazard radar” as well as all the necessary training, communications and behavior based award efforts in place and be in the position to adjust your strategy and control the outcome.

So stop focusing on safety results and focus on and monitor those leading indicators to safe performance.  This is the best way to bring about the behavioral changes that will naturally result in an improvement in lagging indicator performance and a win for your team. 

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

The Truth about Safety Incentives - My How Things Have Changed

We were going through some back issues of safety publications the other day and came across an article from EHS Today that we thought was interesting and worth a revisit.  The article is a little over 10 years old, and is a good example of how safety incentives were viewed at that time.  But in our experience of having implemented hundreds of safety award systems in many different industries, this article has very little to do with the thought process that goes into the safety award programs of today.

The article divides safety professionals into two camps, one that says employees will not be safe unless we give them incentives to do so and the other that incentives should not be needed for them to work safely.  Those debates may have existed ten years ago, but today they are frankly a little silly.  First most safety professionals realize that you can’t “incentivize safety.  And that if you are using safety awards at all, they should be used to reinforce positive safety behaviors of all the things you know they should be doing.    

Safety award systems are not the problem, the problem is not knowing how to use awards properly to reinforce behavior change. We hope the days are over when a program is implemented that focuses on a reward rather than the behavior.  We hope that the days when you might put a brand new wide screen TV in the break room and tell the workers that anyone who didn’t have an accident that quarter would get the chance to win it in the “Super Tuesday Sweepstakes of the Moment.”

Safety awards should be part and parcel of your entire safety culture.  They’re not entitlements, they are not routine unless you call continuously reinforcing good behavior routine, they are certainly never punitive because you should never have a team based incentive in the first place, and they are by no means irrelevant as they speak to the heart of what every safety professional wants their employees to do. 

Frankly the article is demeaning to assert that safety professionals would have used safety awards to “buy your employees commitment to safety with an incentive program.”  In the hundreds and hundreds of safety award initiatives we’ve implemented we’ve never seen any who would even consider that.  They don’t. Safety is too serious a subject for them. 

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

Are Merchandise Safety Awards Overpriced?

If you compare what companies pay for traditional safety incentive merchandise items with those same items at retail the answer is emphatically....YES!  The problem is that the people who receive the value of these awards...your employees, are rarely if ever the same people who purchase them.  They often don’t see the price or value because they are hidden in “points” or “award levels” or other schemes.  For example, a company issues you a safety award and tells you to pick an item from a booklet or grouping of awards.  You have no idea of what your company paid for that award.   Although you do have an idea of what the award is worth. 

Frankly any employee can easily find out what an item is worth by quickly browsing the internet and reviewing any of the many shopping sites, the most prominent of which is Amazon.com.  If the actual cost of the award ever does come to light, and it often does, employees start to question why their company paid so much for the safety award.  Then the questions start...can I get a gift card for the same price you paid for the safety award?  This is probably the main reason why gift cards have jumped to the top of the list of most used recognition and incentive awards...because of their value.

The rewards industry has argued long and hard that they have value as consultative suppliers and view that value should be part of the price of the merchandise.  If they are a value, why not just charge for that service and provide the merchandise at a more competitive price? That way it won’t hurt the employee.

From our perspective in looking at this situation for over 35 years, we believe that even the most novice buyer would have to see that they are paying more than retail for the merchandise.  The question is how much more than retail, and is there a value in the infrastructure provided by the supplier sufficient enough to offset the higher price?  Research by the Incentive Foundation clearly states that nearly 80% of the client respondents didn’t use outside incentive companies for anything other than for fulfillment of the award.  That would seem to indicate that a buyer shouldn’t pay anything more than retail if the vendor is not providing any other service. 

Ask yourself this question.  Shouldn’t your employee receive as much of the value of your safety award budget as possible?  If you have $25, or $50 or $100 or more to reward an employee, shouldn’t they receive a choice of a safety award that approximates that value?   Unfortunately, that is usually not the case when traditional merchandise is the offered safety reward.  We have done extensive research and analysis and can confidently say that the standard cost for the traditional safety award merchandise used in this industry is, on average; 50% HIGHER THAN RETAIL.  We won’t argue here what “Retail” really is, but suffice it to say that with the advent of the internet, retail is easily determined by what the employee perceives it to be.  While they can understand fluctuation of pricing from one retailer to another, swings of up to 50% are deemed unacceptable. 

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

Comparing Various Types Awards for BBS Safety Systems

Choosing an award for your BBS safety system is an important consideration.  You need to choose the award that provides a high degree of motivation while still being cost effective.  It needs to be the type of award that your employees want to achieve.      

When comparing awards for BBS programs we feel you should ask four basic questions: 

Is the award of value to the recipient and cost effective for the company?

Does the award provide a choice to the award winner?

Is the award easy to use without requiring undo internal administration?

Is the award flexible enough to be used in a continuous and consistent BBS award system? 

Over the years we have seen various types awards used for safety programs.  Which of these is best suited for a BBS program?

Cash

Research shows that you need 3 to 4 times the cash over non- cash to motivate the same result.  Cash no memorable recognition value and easily gets lost in the paycheck. It is difficult to issue on the spot cash in a BBS system.

Single Merchandise Items

Has little motivational appeal, and doesn’t capture the attention of the employee unless they specifically desire the item.  Mainly used in sweepstakes or contests this is the lowest form of employee motivation. Pricing and value can be good if purchased at wholesale. Not suited for BBS awards which are repetitive in nature.

Catalogs of Merchandise Items

More motivational appeal because of the greater choice, and if used with “points” or some other media like “cards that are collectible for future redemption, this award can be used in BBS programs.  Ability to accumulate points toward future awards can be good, but as most catalog merchandise is priced substantially over retail, the value to cost relationship is very poor. Per observation awards found in BBS programs are relatively small so having large items of merchandise may have motivation appeal but reality shows that it can take too long to collect enough “points” to redeem for the meaningful award. Managing catalog merchandise programs will take more administration than other types of awards.

Company Identified Items (Tee shirts, caps etc.)

These are more communication types of awards than motivational awards.  They are low cost and can be used as a BBS award, but are difficult to sustain.  How many tees or caps do your employees really want? Probably more of these types of awards in safety cultures than any other type, but are they really an award?

Individual or Group Travel

Very difficult to use any type of travel as a BBS award.  We’ve seen these used when media is issued and collected toward earing the award, the cost of the award is usually prohibitive.

Gift Cards

Gift cards are the most often used award in BBS programs because they are $ for $ and provided the highest choice.  They come in low denominations, are easily issued in BBS programs and can be accumulated for higher awards.  When you give your employees a large number of gift cards to choose from, you can provide virtually unlimited choice.

For every type of non-cash award considered, a part of the award cost will go to the fees necessary to support the delivery of the award.  If you have a gift card source that you can obtain without fees, almost 100% of your BBS safety award budget will get into the hands of your employees…where it belongs.

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

Eliminating Safety Reward Programs In Sales Downturns

There are sales and revenue downturns in every industry and every company.  It is rare for any company to have constant profit growth year to year, and when slumps exist executive and financial management look for ways to cut expenses.  When your budget contains a line item titled “safety incentive” executive can view it as “nice to have” rather than “need to have.” When that happens what does it say about the way upper management views your safety award system? 

We have recommended for some time that you take the word “incentive” out of your safety culture.  It’s not an incentive; it’s reinforcement after the fact and a valid tactic to be used within the proven effective behavior model to change bad safety habits into good ones.  Reducing or eliminating bad safety performance will reduce your overall cost of safety, and improve bottom line results.  In difficult economic times isn’t that exactly what you need to do?  If upper management wants to cut safety award programs in difficult times, why would they want to keep them in good economic times?  It’s not the economy that should drive your safety award efforts, it’s the safety performance. 

We have a great deal of respect for safety management who try to retain their safety award efforts.  They fight that battle because they know these award programs help to cement all the other pieces of your safety effort, the training, communications, measurement, reporting etc. and build a culture of safety success.  And it helps upper management understand and support these efforts. 

Unfortunately when you are in market slump executives have a very hard time drawing a straight line between the cost of safety awards on a short term basis and short term bottom line results.  But the use of safety awards as behavior change tactics are long term strategies.  It takes time to change behavior and when one behavior is changed, another can take its place. 

It is incumbent on safety management to assist top management in understanding the importance of a complete safety effort that includes awards. In the planning stage make sure your management understands these four simple questions: 

What objective(s) do you intend to achieve by implementing a safety award system? 

What metrics do you intend to use to measure the performance toward that objective?

What will be the bottom line result for the company when you achieve the objective?

What is the bottom line consequence if you don’t achieve the objective.

If management doesn’t concur with the answer to these questions, your program will be vulnerable in bad economic times and subject to the budget cutting.  Employee safety award programs need to be viewed as irrefutably producing results.  And then it’s the finance department helping safety management trying to save them from the axe.

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