I would like to respond to the excellent article on safety incentives by Wayne Pardy in the January 28, 2009 issue of SafetyXChange. The idea of safety incentives is not flawed. The problems lie in program design and execution. I would like to suggest an incentive strategy that I have found to be very effective, not to mention cheaper than most of the canned incentive programs on the market.

The Problem

Most safety incentive programs proceed from a false premise: If you reward workers for not getting hurt, they’ll be safe. This type of program doesn’t reward safe behavior; it rewards the absence of unsafe behavior. In essence, it provides workers an incentive to not to report or under-report injuries.

It’s for this reason that OSHA tends to cast a jaundiced eye on incentive programs. There are additional repercussions to rewarding people for not getting hurt:

1. You don’t get accurate accident statistics;
2. Since you don’t learn that accidents have taken place, you can’t determine their cause;
3. Since you can’t determine an accident’s cause, you can’t prevent it from recurring;
4. If your program is based on teams, personal relations between team members can suffer if workers do report an injury;
5. You waste part of your safety budget on an ineffective incentive program; and
6. You cut off the flow of information you need to be effective.

The Solution

Stop rewarding the lack of unsafe behavior and start rewarding safe behavior.

Example: Instead of awarding each employee on a quarterly basis $50 in cash, equivalent non-cash prizes or chances to win prizes, take that $50 and buy 10 $5 gift certificates to a local store, movie theater, restaurant, car wash, etc. Then, pass out those gift certificates when you see someone doing something right. And do it with fanfare. “Hey Jim, glad to see you finally remembered your safety glasses! Here’s a gift certificate.” Before you return to your office, everyone in the facility will know what you just did.

What you’ve just done is reward safe behavior. And in encouraging safe behavior, you’re cultivating safe attitudes, as well. As a side benefit, you’re improving your relationships with workers and getting them to actually look forward to your visits. Last but not least, you’re accomplishing all of these things cost-effectively and saving your company money.

You can modify this type of reward program to improve the flow of information, the lifeblood of an effective safety system, in a variety ways:

1. Reward information on near-misses;
2. Reward useful safety suggestions; and/or
3. Reward all safety-related suggestions by placing all suggestions in a box for a monthly or quarterly drawing.

There is truly no limit on how you can make this system work. Before you know it, you will be getting more useful information than you ever thought possible.

The OSHA Implications

Now, obviously this system won’t work for everyone. Every facility seems to have that one person who simply won’t follow safety rules. If positive reinforcement doesn’t work, discipline must be imposed. And that leads me to one last benefit of this type of reward system.

As far as OSHA is concerned, safety programs that aren’t actively enforced aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. But the need to enforce leaves the safety professional in a dilemma. If I write-up workers for safety violations, I become a “bad guy.” If I don’t write them up, I’m exposing my company to the risk of liability. Well, guess what? Enforcement isn’t just about punishment. Enforcement also includes rewarding good behavior. Of course, you need to use both carrots and sticks. But the combination of rewarding good behavior and punishing bad behavior is key to compliance.

Conclusion

Safety incentive programs that reward workers for being “safe” seldom achieve the desired result, and if they do, the change is rarely permanent. Such programs also encourage under-reporting of accidents and raise red flags with OSHA. So don’t dismiss the idea of incentives entirely. Just make sure that you use them to reward the right thing—safe behavior.

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