Biggest Problems in Safety Incentive Programs

In our opinion, the single biggest problem in safety incentive programs is not setting your program goals in such a way as to motivate performance toward achieving that goal.  The fundamental challenge for anyone designing a safety incentive award program is to have a program that will produce results…or at the bottom line reduce incidents which will result in lowering costs.  That becomes the ultimate objective you want to achieve, but should not be the overt goal of the program.  The goal should be those specific work behaviors that an employee can effect on their own.  

Think about it this way…don’t tell your employees… “if you don’t have an accident we will give you an award.”  That’s actually a little silly if you think about it as no one intentionally goes out and has an accident. You really don’t change behaviors when you use reducing accidents as your goal.  But, you can change those specific behaviors that lead to accidents by rewarding the specific improved performance.  The collection of those improved performances will lead to reduced accidents. 

 The best type of reward system to design is one that gives consistent and continuous small awards to reinforce the changed behaviors.   Research has shown that these types of structures will improve results.

Don’t get caught up in thinking that the big carrot or the grand prize will drive reduced accidents, they won’t.  It is consistently using small and incremental awards for working in a safe manner that will create the habit that will provide better safety results in the long run.

This approach to safety is more long term and consistent with the long term goals of reducing accidents and keeping them low. 

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

Customer Satisfaction and Employee Safety

You can’t achieve customer satisfaction goals without all employees working toward that goal.  When a company doesn’t provide quality customer service it is noticeable almost immediately and losing any customers is very harmful to your bottom line in a short space of time. 

Safety goals not achieved also affect the bottom line, often in a more disastrous way, but

aren’t really noticeable until it is too late.  Unfortunately, many objectives relating directly to the customer often get far more focus from management than objectives relating to safety. To achieve customer satisfaction it all gets down to employee engagement.  So too, you can’t achieve safety objectives on the job without employees being deeply involved in the process.   

Studies have found a positive relationship between employee engagement and organizational performance outcomes: employee retention, productivity, profitability, customer loyalty and safety.

The approach to building customer satisfaction is the same approach to build a successful safety culture.  You need management involvement, communication, awareness, training, measurement and recognition. Just as with employee recognition awards used in companies to build and reinforce overall employee engagement, rewards close the loop on the safety behavior model and allow management to send the message that these positive safety behaviors are effective and appreciated. 

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

How to Make Safety Priority #1 With Executives

In the world of incentives, we often hear that safety professionals have to fight for budget dollars against other processes for production, sales and marketing, etc.  In other words on any given day at any given work-site safety is always Priority One…until it isn’t! If it was truly the utmost priority, safety managers wouldn’t have to fight for every new initiative beyond basic requirements.  If you want to take safety programs from just another line item and turn it into a stand alone strategy, there are three basic things you need to do: 

1.  Make a financial business case for safety to your executive group.  A study published by Accident Analysis and Prevention found that CFOs and other executives believe that for $1 spent improving workplace safety, more than $4 would be returned.  For too long safety professionals sold safety programs as a way to keep a company from losing money.  They do, but they also help to improve a company’s productivity, employee engagement and their ability to make money.
2. Provide motivation for safety among the workforce.  The buzzword for several years now within the human resource precincts has been employee engagement.  Almost everything is tied to it, and now there is more and more evidence that a direct outcome to a more engaged workforce is better company performance.  Behavior based safety applications offers both plant and quality managers an additional level of performance as well.  Well planned safety recognition will reward improved performances, turn them into habits and help to engage your workforce.  Budgets for non-safety employee recognition has been growing consistently for years because it works to improve engagement…it can be that simple!
3. Integrate it into the culture of your company.  Training shows employees how to avoid risk and actions that lead to accidents.  Those skills and habits can be incorporated into other environments to produce fewer performance errors as well.

Will doing the above really improve overall company performance?  In a study published this year titled “Tracking the Market Performance of Companies that Integrate a Culture of Health & Safety: An assessment of Corporate Health Achievement Award Applicants”, researchers showed that the stock market performance of 31 companies that were acknowledged to have exceedingly high safety standards throughout their organization exceeded the S&P average in all 17 measures under examination.  The integration of the above three points makes it clear that safety and and other corporate strategies are inextricably linked.

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

How to Translate Corporate Safety Goals to Your Employees

One of the biggest challenges for HS&E Managers and Supervisors is effectively translating corporate safety goals into workable safety programs at the front-line level. 

Throughout the years, numerous approaches have been applied to address this challenge.  Typically, these include corporate mandates, hazard recognition training to achieve minimal compliance and avoid formal investigations, posters / tee-shirts / caps with safety messages that ultimately are lost in “the landscape” of the day-to-day job sites, threats of losing one’s job, formal safety mission / vision / values statements, and the list goes on and on.

In order to properly assess and solve the challenges of in-the-field commitment to safety performance, let’s first look at what goes into sound corporate safety objectives.  For a short paper that highlights this subject and discusses a simple principle communicate it effectively, please click here.

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