Safety incentive programs have been around for years. Their goal is to change unsafe behaviors, reinforce safe behaviors and improve morale. While many organizations report positive results with incentives, others fail miserably. Negative side effects can include feelings of entitlement, poor morale and failure to report accidents. I would like to attempt to explain why some incentive programs work and others don't.

The Problem Is in the Definition

Let's begin by reducing the concept of incentives to its most basic elements. Incentives offer a reward in return for a desired action. The theory is that if employees perform the desired action long enough, it will become a normal behavior. This sounds logical enough. So where do things go wrong?

Maybe the deficiency lies in how we define the desired action. Many organizations link desired actions with the number of accidents. With this association, it is possible - likely even - that a company will experience a decrease in the number of accidents reported. I stress the word "reported." Incentives often lead to underreporting of accidents. A worker may choose to remain silent rather than report an accident or near miss so as not to cause the loss of his (or his team's) promised reward.

Redefining Desired Action

So how can we avoid this pitfall? Let's go back to our simple definition of incentives: offering a reward in return for a desired action. Action means doing something. Rather than linking these actions with reducing the number of accidents reported, consider defining what actions employees can take that will begin to develop a high performance safety culture. Such actions could include:

Avoiding the Sense of Entitlement

Each organization should create its own list of desired outcomes. Include actions for both employees and management. Remember that to develop a high performance safety culture, everyone has to take action.

Make sure that the items on your list are ones that require action to be taken. Rewards that do not require actions are not really rewards and will be quickly viewed as entitlements. It's also important that each item on your list is measurable and verifiable.

Keep It Fresh

One other thought about creating a safety incentive program: Change is GOOD. Every year or so revise your list of actions as well as the rewards. By continuing to change the program, employees and management are much less likely to become bored with it.

Conclusion

Don't shy away from implementing a safety incentive program. Just make sure you thoughtfully identify what actions you want to encourage and get the whole team involved.

MEMBER REPLY
Re: 6 Ways to Create Safety Programs that Stick

I have read the other comments and offer the following suggestions:

1. Create a Safety Culture in the working environment (each employee is responsible in keeping safe work place, Employee of the month, Awards, weekly meetings, suggestions and recognition...etc.).

2. Perform Risk Assessment/ Job Hazard Analysis whenever there is a change in administrative and engineering processes. Training and use of PPE should be available for a new job if required.

3. Communication is the key between employees and the management.

H. Singh Ahuja, Physical Scientist
Bureau of Land Management-Milwaukee Field Office

* * * * *

Maybe I am a bit old and grumpy, but I was disappointed with the suggestions by my colleagues. A bit too textbook for me. Two did see the flash in the pan regarding "focus shifts to other tasks." That flash is important.

After a very successful career as a risk manager (risk management, safety, worker's comp management, etc.) in a real live 24/7 multi-state company I accepted an offer to work as a safety officer, yep a step down, with an organization with a serious safety program problem. If numbers mean anything, try this: 400 employees averaging 80-90 injury claims per year, and million+ a year in claims costs and another million dollars a year is accident repair costs. I was in heaven. We are now on year six of my "program" and those numbers are now cut in half or more, and we still have a long way to go.

I came in with all the text book knowledge and real life experience, and found that many of the old standards such as: "good role models", "let the employees run it", or "management leadership" did not fit into the corrective plan. Yes, I needed all of that in place, but it would not be enough to move the organization in the right direction. Gary Wolf and Joyce Brown came closest to the answer, yet drifted back to the old reliable textbook, this is, what worked for me stuff. I have news for them, sometimes, that "stuff" does not work.

Devin, I am not sure how organizationally healthy your workgroup is or how much influence you have to truly change it, but I will assume you are at least as stubborn and matter of fact as I. If you want a program to work, throw it out (figuratively, you are going to need it later). Do not step outside the box (that's paradigm shift), build a new box . Go back to your comment: "when the focus shifts to other tasks," the key word is focus. You can not change the tasks or any business driven change those are out of your control. You need to work on the "focus" and build upon it, through it, in spite of it until that intangible "safety" becomes a complete and essential part of process, program or production, right down to the simplest most mundane task.

One real life story: A oiler pit worker consistently failed to put fall protection up when he left the pit area. There had been a serous injury to a special needs worker a few years before. His supervisors could not get him to change. I began to talk to him about the rules, the hazards, the law, blah blah blah. Still to no avail. Getting upset, did not help, warning did not help.

Finally in desperation I stopped him in the middle of his work and said, "I have been asking you to do a very simple thing. Why won't you do it?" His answer has had more effect on me than any other I have had before or since. He said, "I know where the pit is and I'm not going to fall into it." My response: "This is not about you. I know you can work safely next to the pit, your accident record says so. This is about me. One of these days this 'stupid' safety dude is going to forget about it fall in while he's busy doing something else." He look at me and smiled said "I hadn't thought of that" and from that day forward, put the safety gear up (at least most of the time). Something clicked inside him that made the connection.

Joyce and Gary both talked about "systems," Gary used the word, Joyce did not, but that is what they were both driving at. Safety systems generally work to help you established mechanical control of a process or production, hence the term process safety.

What they lack is the heart or center of safety: People. That is what drives a new program or initiative, and the success of your organization for that matter, people. If you want your "safety program," initiative, system or whatever to work, get to the heart center of your workers (management, supervision, line) focus and stay there. Oops, did I include managers and supervisors as part of the problem? Absolutely! No this is not easy, it takes hard work, persistence and the ability to mold the message to fit the individual, no matter who it is, something almost all of us find difficult to some extent. That is how you get the paradigm to shift. Gary was right, you cannot write a program, put up posters, have a great send off and wait for the results, they (the results) will never come in.

Feel free Devin, to e-mail me back if you find this helpful or if you want to know more about my slow clean up process. My best wishes for your next safety initiative.

Jim Scarr, Safety Officer
King County SWD
jim.scarr@kingcounty.gov

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