Recognition, Incentives, and Safe Work

I love the way that incentives can be used strategically to improve people’s lives and deliver business results. Think about it; a well designed incentive program can improve employee wellness, safety, productivity, sales results, quality, customer service, and so on. In each one of those instances, the company benefits and the employee benefits through the excitement and confidence that comes with success in the workplace.

Of course, safe work incentives add the extra dynamic of improving the health and safety of participants. In a client meeting this past week, their leaders shared forward thinking ideas about the use of incentives and recognition to drive safe work awareness and behaviors while reducing the costs associated with preventable and lost-time accidents.

Every program has to start somewhere, and we discussed the option of rewarding safety coordinators across the country for being diligent about completing their safe work duties in a timely and effective manner as a phase one to the program. Those duties include the on-time completion of:

     • Safety Scorecards – Quarterly

     • Loss Prevention Surveys – Monthly

     • Holding Safety Meetings – Monthly

     • Incident Investigation Actions – As Needed

     • Safety Message Program – Ongoing

     • Safe Work Certification – Ongoing

Our contact knows that accomplishing each of these duties in a timely fashion will dramatically increase the level of safe work awareness, which is the number one driver of safe work. I always ask clients to think about how incentives can positively impact their business. How can they affect yours?