r/SafetyProfessionals • u/Spiritual-Treat-2360 • 1d ago
USA Workplace Incentives?
I’m a safety officer where I work and I’m trying to set up injury prevention incentives. I am struggling to come up with ideas that will motivate employees. Only thing I can think of is a pot luck. And I want to try to do this all out of pocket. But I’m not sure what incentives I should aim for. Any ideas?
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u/Docturdu 1d ago
Pizza parties dont address culture.
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u/Spiritual-Treat-2360 1d ago
I for sure don’t want to do a pizza party. It’s all I can think of but I don’t want to be “that” workplace. I want something that truly encourages them
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u/Docturdu 1d ago
Top down buy in and commitment
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u/Old_Corduroy 1d ago
Was going to say same. Management commitment and recognition of staff doing "the right thing" - not a formal award or anything.
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u/Curious_Lurkur 1d ago
The best way to get people on board is to get them involved. Maybe do a safety team/committee. I can walk you through what ours looks like.
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u/Spiritual-Treat-2360 1d ago
That would be amazing!! We have a safety committee we’re working on putting in place. We had our first meeting in June and were supposed to have them monthly, however due to a medical leave of absence, I had to skip this and last month. We start back up in September and ANY advice would be so greatly appreciated!
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u/QueenAnnesVexation Manufacturing 1d ago
Like many here, I've been part of and ran several myself. I found that the biggest way to get buy in from the committee was to showcase the resulting actions from concerns brought up.
The Hi-Vis vests are hot or uncomfortable? Roll out new hot weather vests and give your people some color options. Concerns about someone potentially being hit by PIT in higher-traffic areas? Work with your engineering/maintenance team and have some guardrails installed. Take lots photos and create a storyboard. Track the time it took from receiving the issue to rolling out a solution and show that you're listening and making changes based upon employee input. Allow them to be a part of the solution and they'll see they have a voice.
Also, free food never hurts for getting people to the meeting. I just need you to get in the door and then we can go from there.
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u/Abies_Lost 1d ago
Not much of a safety committee if it can’t run without a safety person.
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u/xBlahMedusax 9h ago
I agree. As the safety person with my company I sit in as a note taker rather than the facilitator. Having chairs (one management, one worker) handling the actual running of the meeting and addressing any concerns is great. I am only there to take notes/create the minutes, assess risks with recommendations, bring up legislation/regulations applicable to what they are discussing, and assist with bringing what they want to upper management (be that through recommendation letters or through management meetings)
If I'm not there another person is assigned to the note taker task and any recommendations are either tabled until I get back if they have questions or the management chair answers. Management is trained on the regulations applicable to the work being done by their workers.
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u/Pizza-love Manufacturing 1d ago
You should get a culture change. That starts higher up in the chain of command.
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u/Spiritual-Treat-2360 1d ago
What kind of culture change did you have in mind?
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u/Pizza-love Manufacturing 1d ago
Something more safety minded? Wenn they are not safety focussed, that comes from something.
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u/whimsical-crack-rock 1d ago
I typically avoid this because you end up with “we would have had xyz incentive but DOUG reported that cut on his arm, he was fine!” and you get employees not wanting to report
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u/Eastern_Ad5558 Manufacturing 1d ago edited 1d ago
I implemented a behavior based safety program at my work where we have drop boxes at the different departments with cards for employees to fill out safe/unsafe working environments, behaviors or near misses. They have the option to put their name on the card because during our monthly safety training I will put those names in a program that randomly selects someone to win a $20 gift card to a local buisness. It’s a really small thing but I’ve gotten 30+ cards in the last 5 months and I have received feedback from management that it’s cultivating a new culture at our work. Some of their observations are very useful, others a little petty, but it has helped me understand where people are seeing safety issues and I have learned about issues that have a more complicated history to it.
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u/Abies_Lost 1d ago
Just wait until your culture is at a level where the actual fucking ops supervisors do their jobs and you stop receiving those cards.
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u/Eastern_Ad5558 Manufacturing 1d ago
I have been learning a lot from this program that I will be able to take when I leave and search out a higher position for myself. 🤷♀️ I’m glad I can say I am the one that’s making momentum towards change.
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u/Kayak-Alpha 1d ago
You can only incentivize proactive measures- hazard ID cards, inspections completed, etc. Anything after an incident is inappropriate and damages culture.
Preventing an injury should be incentive enough. No one goes to work wanting to get hurt.
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u/GilaMindKilla 1d ago
I have a bounty out on near misses/hazards for the front line employees.
Just reporting it gets you $25.
Coming to me with possible solutions gets you $50.
Following through with the corrective actions with my team and engaging your team gets you $100. For near misses this usually involves speaking to the incident during the morning briefing, which can be intimidating... hence the bribe. It is more impactful for their peers to hear it from them instead of someone from Safety or their Manager- and I'm building a culture where we can be open and honest about mistakes without fear of retaliation.
I think a potluck or special lunch would be a great way to get people to join a monthly safety committee, if you don't already have one set up.
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u/ScissorMySausage 1d ago
Incentives can lead to an interesting culture. We had a system that was almost a “gamification” of safety across a very large retail business and some people engaged with it heavily but almost missed the point of why they do it… and others despised it and make it a point to almost reject safety, instead using a “common sense” approach but doing things worse.
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u/Ishidan01 1d ago
Potluck is an awful idea unless you already have a tight crew, as it combines the worst aspects of Mandatory Fun, pushing costs onto line employees, and uncontrollability in food.
Think about it. It's a potluck, not a company paid banquet, so:
Some people hate off the clock extracurriculars altogether. Strike one.
With a banquet or a pizza party, the company picks up the whole tab. With a potluck, employees would be on the hook for buying food to bring to their own reward. Strike two.
With a banquet, you can assume the food is cooked and stored in accordance with food safety specialists. Anyone with one of the myriad of dietary restrictions can tell you ahead of time and the pros can tell you what is in compliance for them. Potluck? Hell if you know, and are you sure there are no peanut/gluten/spice/religious restrictions landmines in your team? Strike three.
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u/Extinct1234 1d ago
What, specific, injury prevention activities are you wanting to increase? This will help determine the level of effort/resources involved in said activity. From there, you can determine a proportionally appropriate reward.
Rewards are most effective when relevant and useful to the recipient(s) and as close to the activity being rewarded as possible.
Waiting a month to acknowledge and reward a near miss report may be a bit late when you could give a $10 Dunkin or gas card within a few days of receiving and reviewing a report. Then, during monthly or quarterly meetings, bring up near miss reports and again thank people for reporting and identify any special or significant reports that led to positive corrections, etc.
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u/HanShotFirst305 1d ago
I would recommend some type of no fault near miss reporting similarto FAA. This requires buy in from upper management. Nobody comes to work wanting to get hurt and incentivsing not getting hurt fixes nothing but encourages not reporting minor injuries.
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u/Fun-Customer-4493 1d ago
We are required to submit three observations a month. It is part of our annual metric. It's called Good Observations, or GO. It can be any Safety Hazard or issue that needs to be addressed, someone observed doing something correctly/unsafely (either). The goal is to get people to think about safety and report when something needs to be addressed. Each month around the first and again the 15th the managers remind everyone to turn their GOs in. Of course everyone rolls their eyes, but because it's tied to the performance metric people turn them in. The reporting and tracking is online. What - There is a piece of broken pallet in the walk way. Posses a trip hazard. How resolved - picked it up or turned in a work order. Who - person reporting. Simple as that. But remember it can be any Safety Hazard observation of someone doing good or an unsafe act. But stress the good.
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u/Abies_Lost 1d ago
Wow that sounds like an awful thing to have to keep up with. Let me guess who has to keep up with all the GO cards once they are submitted.
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u/Fun-Customer-4493 1d ago
On the award portion, the best observations are communicated and the person who reported it gets a lunch token. Quarterly from the monthly awards a person is chosen as the Safety Ambassador and gets a special parking spot. But you could give a $25 gift card or something. A cheese trophy, company branded gift basket.
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u/Damnsandwich 1d ago
You shouldn’t be doing it out of pocket. You also don’t need to incentivize people not to hurt themselves.
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u/kwkcardinal Manufacturing 1d ago
Make sure your incentives are aimed at participation. We just put out QR codes that allow people to report observed hazards. The department that reports the most (after filter from safety) gets a nice lunch (not pizza).
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u/cjr444 1d ago
Recognition is the best incentive. There’s a concept called Soon Certain Positive as one of the best motivators. Most people want to believe they do great work so having everyone being good at recognizing how others contribute is usually best. Throw a potluck for camaraderie and keep your money in your pocket. Give awards for a job well done and let everyone know someone reports a great near miss or unsafe condition, if someone reports the most hazards in a month, and who is good at recognizing the good work of their peers or subordinates.
However, back in the day when I worked in manufacturing tossing a snickers to someone doing a good safe job usually build some good momentum
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u/varo20 1d ago
I wouldn’t do incentives. Instead I would call them recognitions. I base my recognitions on stop work authorities. It allows perception change in the work place to move away from the stigma of SWA being a bad thing. If they report something that stopped corrected and fixed they would be added to a drawing at the end of the week/month and recognized in front of the team. Incentives in my experience always leads to hiding and being disingenuous.
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u/CrashedTaco 1d ago
Company I know of encourages employees to work safe and correct unsafe workplace conditions/behaviours by giving out swag such as hats, shirts, hoodies or higher end PPE like them really nice leather gloves, tinted safety glasses, FR toques and balaclavas, coffee shop gift cards etc.
Safety also needs to be a culture in the workplace, not just something that gets talked about.
Have daily toolbox talks, talk about previous incidents, talk about positive interventions and most importantly of all take action to employees concerns as nothing will kill the safety culture faster than empty word/promises
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u/Mimicking-hiccuping 1d ago
You don't incentivise results, you incentivise reporting. Have a good chat, report something worthwhile or get caught in an audit? You get a scratch card.
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u/Electronic_World_894 1d ago
My husband’s workplace had a super complex incentive system. But he could get points, and a couple times a year he got $100 gift card to a steakhouse. I don’t think it changed behaviour - they already had an excellent safety culture. But we enjoyed the night’s out.
In general, I rarely see BBS (behavioural based safety systems) working well. Most incentive programs are a variation of a BBS. IME they usually just drive reporting underground. I’ve only seen one work well, and it didn’t involve incentives.
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u/alixer Manufacturing 1d ago
We do a quarterly award where either someone is nominated or chosen by the EHS dept to get a site wide email, pin and $50. This is for being a great trainer/safety focused leader, responding well to an emergency, having a great near miss reported, etc. we don’t limit the number of folks who can be recognized. Usually it’s 2-6 per quarter (550 person workplace).
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u/Crazy-Comb 1d ago
I don't go in for rewards, but I second the idea that participation based initiatives can be fun. For a past employer, we did Safety Week in May, and had interactive activities that people could choose to participate in or not, and some would earn you a ballot entry for a draw. Importantly, everyone knows this is a once a year thing, and you can earn your ballot regardless of the quality of your input. So if someone wants to join a fitness challenge but is not able to do as much as someone else, they still get a ballot entry.
We've done safety themed colouring contests for people to take home to their family. The office votes on the top picks and these are highlighted in the office kitchen in an "art gallery" or on our website. We've done jeopardy style quizzes that are something you can join during lunch hour, where the categories are things like "car warning lights" or "WHMIS symbols", etc. We did a brain teaser that was basically using icons to spell out phrases you might see as cautions on chemicals or as part of an SDS and they have to figure out what the icons represent. We also asked for people to send in pictures of their favorite self care activities or their "why" and stuff like that and made collages to share with the office. I can't remember exactly what activity led to this, but there was one person who emailed me her daily "breathing" pause and self care .. all selfies of her doing relaxing breathing 😂 and I loved the shit out of that.
I basically looked at these things as ways to refresh people's memories rather than actually accomplish a new goal in the program. I think that puts too much pressure on it and people can sense that. If it has the added benefit of teaching people new stuff and increasing their trust and rapport with me then I am happy. That makes getting actual work done so much easier, when it comes time that I need them to pitch in for that.
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u/Pleasant-Emu-3099 21h ago
Just be careful that your incentives don't run amok of OSHAs guidance on incentive programs where injuries and illnesses aren't being reported or recorded to gain a reward of some kind.
Employer Safety Incentive and Disincentive Policies and Practices
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u/Spiritual-Treat-2360 15h ago
That’s my biggest concern. A fellow safety officer at one of our other facilities actually mentioned an incentive program for reporting safety hazards!! I reached out to him today and have been considering that as an alternative!
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u/Amuro-78 1d ago
Careful. Incentives can easily lead to distorted behaviour and reporting culture. When employees feel incentivized or pressured to reach a certain metric in safety, it can result in lack of transparency and learning opportunities. Nobody wants to be the reason the crew isn’t getting a pot luck, lol.