Comments on: Don't Incentivize Workplace Safety

By: Don’t Incentivize Workplace Safety | Health and Safety Risk Management

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 03:33:35 +0000

[...] pros and cons for safety incentive schemes, a frgreat article from by Lance Haun – read it here: inShareDon’t Incentivize Workplace SafetyLet’s say you work for one of these companies that has [...]

By: Safety and wellness award systems using gift cards as awards. Improve safe behavior, and reduce incidents of injuries and accidents | Award Safety

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:10:44 +0000

[...] recently reviewed a blog post at ReHaul by Lance Haun titled “Don’t Incentivize Safety.” You might think that this is a strange place to link to a viewpoint that is essentially anti-safety [...]

By: Ley Borlo

Ley Borlo — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:54:55 +0000

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

By: Jay Rohman

Jay Rohman — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:18:54 +0000

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.

By: Heath Davis Havlick

Heath Davis Havlick — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:24:14 +0000

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.

By: Greg

Greg — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:39:07 +0000

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.

By: John Jorgensen

John Jorgensen — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:14:13 +0000

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.

By: David Rendall

David Rendall — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:38:58 +0000

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

By: Lance Haun

Lance Haun — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:10:57 +0000

You nailed it Greg and it is in perfect contrast to the incentivizing of safety performance.

By: Greg

Greg — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:54:19 +0000

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.