Used correctly, safety rewards can be very effective. Rewards foster accountability. Rewarding people for positive things gets them to do those things. It’s basic human behavior. People want to get caught doing the right thing. These principles should be used to improve safety performance.

Selecting the Right Rewards

Different levels of an organization should be rewarded for different things. The reward should be tailored to the result the individual can control. Thus, rewards for people at lower levels should be based primarily on activities rather than organizational results. I can’t stress this point strongly enough. It’s pointless to base a front-line shiftworker’s on the  accident statistics of an entire organization because individual shiftworkers don’t control organization-wide injury statistics.

It’s equally pointless to reward front-line workers based on outcomes within their own small groups. For instance, a group of six workers that experienced no lost-time injuries didn’t necessarily work more safely than a similar-sized group that had one injury. Accident rates among small groups are statistically unreliable and should not be the basis for rewards.

By contrast, rewards for upper level managers should be based on organizational results. Still, even upper managers should have some part of their reward tied to activities. For example, some companies base 80% of an executive’s reward on results and 20% on activities. This acknowledges the symbolic value of upper management activity—upper management must be seen doing things to promote health and safety if the rest of the organization is to believe that health and safety is really a priority.

Conclusion

So much for general principles. How do you know the particular rewards to offer to individuals and groups at your organization? I’ll show you how to answer that question next week.

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