Incentive Programs Can Help Your Safety Program Succeed?

Traditional safety award programs were originally designed to decrease accidents and almost all of them rewarded employees based on the number of accidents reduced.  Unfortunately poor design, using team goals and lax supervisory attention lead to non-reporting of incidents by employees in order to get their awards.    

Today safety award programs are used to reduce the leading indicators of accidents and reinforcing other major components like training and education.  In any award program, a key first step is to challenge employees to participate in these programs, and here incentives play an important role.  

Other Ways Incentives Can Work For Your Safety Program 

Safety Incentives Change Behavior

Behavior Based Safety probably gets as much negative press from safety professionals as not.  For many reasons it’s just not well liked.  But like so many business strategies, it’s not always the strategy that’s at fault, but the implementation.  In its simplest form, BBS is the monitoring of safety behavior by management and peers and the reinforcement of those behaviors when they are positive.  When you use minimal awards reinforcing the behavior, you can turn it into a habit. Regrettably too many companies used these programs negatively, which does nothing to improve performance

Safety Incentives Promote Healthy Work Culture

Incentives can be used to motivate your workforce to enroll in wellness programs and then actively participate in them to achieve their individual results. They have proven very effective for this objective especially in gaining introductory interest.

Safety Incentives Engage Employees to Drive Overall Results

Safety programs are connected to your overall business goals because when your workplace is safe, there are reduced work-related injuries, burnout, and employee turn-over rates. Through communications, the right awards, surveys and other feedback mechanisms you can ensure that your safety program has high participation and engagement. 

Safety programs not only build a good safety record, but also help build your company culture and connect employees to the core values of your business. A successful program can also ensure a return on the investment, proving that when employees look out for each other, they also look out for the health and wellbeing of your business.  Allow you employees to participate in profits with year-end recognition events that will further strengthen your safety culture.