Let’s say you work for one of these companies that has heavy machinery, sharp blades and furnaces. Sounds pretty cool, right? Okay, maybe that’s just me. I love industrial workplaces. Places where things are made, where real work gets done and you shake an employees hand and it feels like you just put your hand into a sandpaper vise. You wear safety glasses and a hard hat when you walk around but let’s face it: if something really went wrong, none of those things would protect you.
I’ve always thought that workplaces that incentivize workplace safety with money, prizes or a drawing don’t understand how workplace safety works at all. They think they can treat it like any other business problem but they can’t. There are other factors in play. Paul Hebert over at I2I explains some of his reasoning from a motivation standpoint and I wanted to expand on what he had to say.
All rewards are either too small to matter or too big to not cover up minor injuries or issues. Neither one of these outcomes are acceptable if you want a truly effective workplace safety program. A tote bag or $25 isn’t enough to impact your decision making. If it were $1,000, you would be likely to cover up minor injuries to keep the bonus. Safety is one of those things where there is no happy middle.
It is trying to take a one size fits all approach to something that simply can’t be fitted that way. Here’s how I’ve seen programs successfully done without reward based incentives:
- Communicate expectations – Amazing how we usually skip over this part. When you clearly define what your expectations are, you can have an immediate impact on the safety.
- Fix systematic issues and processes – If there is a culture of toughing it out or managers who don’t take action on reported injuries or issues, it is time to fix those sorts of problems.
- Proactively addressing safety hazards – It seems like a common sense thing but it often gets overlooked.
- Coach underperformers – Whether it be thoughtlessness, laziness or whatever the reason, managers have to coach the people that propagate near misses and injuries.
- Safety is its own motivation and reward – Everyone I’ve worked with wants to work in a safe environment. When people aren’t getting hurt at work, people appreciate that.
These techniques, when customized and implemented throughout organizations, have more impact on safety than any incentive scheme you can think of.
Now if your finance department is hassling you about costs, I can’t stress enough that working closely with your workers compensation insurance provider is likely going to save you a lot more money than any incentive program you can dream of. If you don’t have tight oversight of your process already, it is time to buckle down and start examining how the insurance company has handled claims on your behalf.
What safety programs have you seen that have worked effectively?
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
There is much more than not rewarding safety performance. Don’t punish poor safety performance. Companies that rely on punishing, poor safety performance have claims hidden to avoid bad recognition. I have seen it too often where Companies recognize the number of days without a lost time accident or tying in bonuses of Managers for lower incidents or accidents. These only result in hidden injuries and near misses.
If every near miss was identified, investigated and corrected, the number of first aids would decrease leading to a decrease in injuries, then a decrease in lost time accidents and fatalities. When Executives realize that and encourange all near misses to be reported and investigated and not punished, we will have a much safer work environment and more employees can go home to their families at the end of the day.
Safety is about awareness and awareness cannot happen if we punish people for reporting what actually happens.
You nailed it Greg and it is in perfect contrast to the incentivizing of safety performance.
Greg, you are right on. Near Misses are a crystal ball to the safety world. They should be embraced by recording and analyzing them. In all major accidents that I have studied, there were a number of near misses that led up to the actual event. Organizations need to ask themselves what are they afraid of. It’s like a ostrich putting their head in the sand and hoping nobody can see them.
Great stuff, Lance. Very timely. I just watched the safety video at one of my client’s sites yesterday. They work with sulfuric acid, phosphoric acid, ammonia and a lot of other dangerous substances. They are always looking for good ideas on improving safety. This gave me some good information to share with them.
Dave
Great post Lance. I have never felt that safety should be made a “game” out of. It is a performance standard like any other in the organization and can easily be measured, evaluated and tied to the bottom line.
I must disagree with Greg however (unless I am reading him wrong). Poor safety performance should be punished if it is a result from unsafe acts, violations of safe operating procedures or ignoring safety training. That would be similar to any other violation of workplace rules. You just have to make sure that the right person is punished. If it is the manager who has ignored safe procedures or not trained the employee, then he is the one who needs to be called on the carpet. If it is maintenance who didn’t do the proper preventive work, then they need to be called on the carpet, not the machine operator. Hopefully, if all cylinders are clicking, there is no need for such action and all “accidents” are truly that.
John, I guess I did not make myself clear. I do agree that specific unsafe actions by individuals, including Managers who ignore or condone unsafe actions need to be addressed with proper training given and if necessary corrective action taken. Employees really do want to go home safely to their families at night and sometimes only need to be reminded of that. Obviously the continuous disregard for the safety of themselves or others needs to result in disciplinary action.
What I am talking about is the way safety is looked at from a corporate view. I worked for an organization where significant (five figure) bonuses were attached to the number of Safety incidents, including near misses and lost time accidents. Zero incidents were promoted, praised and portrayed as the best in class. This was a highly industrial manufacturing plant where I can guarantee near misses occurred. What local management did was not report near misses and incidents so a clean safety record could be reported and bonuses could be received. Statistics and the reward became the issue, not safety because of how corporate measured and rewarded based on statistics.
Rewarding good safety statistics only caused safety concerns to be hidden and not addressed or resolved. The culture was to not report safety infractions because management would get mad and punish anyone and everyone that hurt their bonus eligibility. Having any system of measurement that does not include encouraging all near misses to be reported and investigated will eventually result in a very serious accident.
What I am saying is that rewards for both good and bad numbers, should not be part of any safety program. In my experience it does not really work.
Good points here. My brother and brother-in-law both work in factories, and I’ve heard stories of injuries being “hushed up” so safety goals/bonuses could be ensured.
Lance,
Interesting posts all, and while I’d like to defend the incentive award industry here, when it comes to safety incentives, I really can’t. Our industry is loaded with folks who want to sell a prize, the higher the profit and commission, the better. Unfortunately there are only a few who want to devote the time necessary (or even have the experience) to implement the type of safey incentive program that will change behaviors, form sound safety habits and produce results. Based on these comments, I would say that the views here are based on the traditional safety incentives that have been used for years. and that frankly don’t do much in changing behavior, or reinforcing a safety culture.
Having analyzed and implemented safety award systems for years, I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. Too many on the ugly side. Safety incentives need to be about changing behavior, not rewarding the results. All the points mentioned here are exellent, but just as you have seen better results without reward based incentives, I have seen and have many clients who continue to use safety awards in conjunction with communications, measurement, training and feedback to produce amazing results. Thanks for the interesting article.
Ley Borlo
AwardSafety.com
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