Last week, we talked about why offering employees incentives to work safely is such an emotionally charged and controversial topic. My theory is that some of the concepts of incentives are sound. The problems lie with the execution. Let's talk about the aspects of incentives that work and try to explain why they work.

From Theory to Practice

Different individuals and businesses use incentives for different reasons. But most safety professionals and company officials have a hard time articulating the logic for offering incentives and the expectations they harbour for their various programs. Many times we do them because others are, or because we're told we need them, or a recent safety magazine article says we need to consider them.

Many justify incentives by anecdotally citing improvements in statistical safety performance (in the form of reduced accident and injury frequency or severity). Example: "Since we started offering incentives, accident rates have fallen 80%." But what they have difficulty determining is whether there is a direct cause and effect relationship between the offering of incentives and the statistical improvement. Ask safety directors how they know that it's not simply the product of coincidence or luck, and you're apt to get a blank stare or a set of shrugged shoulders.

Positive incentives can, in fact, lead to improvements in safety management and performance. But they must be used with intelligence, integrity, honesty and in accordance with the best interests of all workers, management and the long-term viability of the business.

Selecting the Right Approach: The Komaki Study

There are as many different program options for offering safety incentives and recognition as there are organized health and safety management systems. The challenge is creating an approach that meets existing business and regulatory realities and is tied to the organization's strategic safety goals, objectives and targets.

In a study published in a 1978 issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, Judi Komaki, Kenneth Barwick and Lawrence Scott of the Georgia Institute of Technology conducted a baseline analysis finding that safe practices tend to be short-term and not maintained because there's little, if any, positive reinforcement for performing safely. At the same time, employees were not provided with opportunities to learn to avoid unsafe practices. When employees did perform unsafely, they rarely suffered an injury.

Using a behavioral observation approach that specified safe, unsafe or unobserved behaviors, scores were computed which translated into levels or degrees of safety. Training was provided on behavioral observation techniques and employees agreed to a departmental goal of 90% safe. Data was then collected and progress toward the targets charted.

To complement the feedback on how many safe or unsafe behaviors were recorded, supervisors were asked to recognize workers when they performed select activities safely. One of the fundamental issues for this approach was to clearly define the expectations for safety in terms of the behaviors of the workers performing the work. By specifying very exact behaviors and defining them as being safe, the objective assessment was meant to make safety an objective, observable item. Rather than using slogans and posters which extolled the virtue and value of general safety sentiments, safety was defined in terms of very specific, observable behaviors.

The researchers noted that although a correlational analysis was not possible for the study, they hoped that assessments of the relationship between the behavioral measure of safety and injuries would be conducted in future studies. [i]

The Fox, Hopkins, Anger Study

The long term effects of a "token economy" on safety performance in open pit mining were studied by David K. Fox, B.L. Hopkins and W. Kent Anger. The results were published in the Fall 1987 edition of the Journal of Applied Behavior Psychology. The authors noted that most of the research conducted using the behavioral approach to safety focused on changing behaviors, or behavior-produced environmental conditions assumed to be unsafe. In attempting to determine a direct cause and effect relationship between behavioral approaches to safety and improved safety performance, the authors noted that existing research failed to examine changes in the number of incidents, or the extent of injuries as the behavioral changes occurred.

In the Fox, Hopkins, Anger study, employees earned trading stamps for working without a lost time injury, working in a group in which other workers experienced no lost time injuries, not being involved in equipment-damaging accidents, making adopted safety suggestions and unusual behavior which prevented an injury or accident. Workers lost stamps if they or other workers in their group were injured, caused equipment damage or failed to report accidents or injuries. Stamps could be exchanged for thousands of different items at redemption stores.

According to the study, the implementation of the token economy was followed by large reductions in the number of days lost from work because of injuries, the number of lost time injuries and the costs of accidents and injuries. And these improvements were maintained over a period of years. [ii]

Conclusion

That's all for today. I'll pick up the analysis of effective incentive programs next week.

* * * * * * * * *

FOOTNOTES

[i] Judi Komaki, Kenneth Barwick and Lawrence Scott, "A Behavioral Approach to Occupational Safety: Pinpointing and Reinforcing Safe Performance in a Food Manufacturing Plant," Journal of Applied Psychology 63 (1978): pp. 434-445.

[ii] David K. Fox, B.L. Hopkins and W. Kent Anger, "The Long-Term Effects of a Token Economy on Safety Performance in Open Pit Mining," Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 3 (Fall 1987): p. 223

BY THE NUMBERS
School Fires

By Glenn Demby

As our kids go back to school, we should all be aware of a new report from the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) about the causes of school fires. The report concludes that fatalities from school fires are rare. When fires do break out, the place they most often start is in the lavatory. Fires are most likely to occur at the beginning and end of the school year.

The 3 leading causes of fires in school buildings:

Here are some other numbers from the USFA study:

Source: USFA, "School Fires," Aug. 2007, (figures are from 2003 to 2005), http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/downloads/pdf/tfrs/v8i1.pdf

Story Tools:  E-mail this to a friend  Print This Post Top