Safety Knights

I’ve seen success with annual dinners and prize drawings for safety committee volunteers. This approach separates the gifts from actual reporting/metrics. They are thanked for their participation throughout the year - not just one event. Another thoughtful (almost free) approach is writing thank you letters.

I’m interested to see what other approaches folks have taken.

We Incentivize tasks that are not directly tied to reporting. Observations, JSA’s, Lock Tag Verify diagrams, mentoring new employees, and submitting process improvements. Most of the items are company swag.

free food and free merch

I have had long thoughts about this topic. How to properly incentivize employees for being safe without making it about the incentive. We want out employees working safely because of the right reasons not just because they get a prize if they fill out an audit. The prizes themselves are easy but what is the best program to push the right message?

Personal factors. Make it personal. Intrinsic motivation is the strongest and longest motivational factor.

Aside from that, a positive comment or a thank you goes a long way. Lunch is a good idea too.

I used to keep “fancier” safety glasses in my office, and take a pair with me everytime I went on our production floor. The first person I saw working with all the safety procedures in place would get the safety glasses as a reward, and employees would be happier to see me and more likely to engage.

This is one that is near and dear to my heart. In over 24 years, I've seen good incentive programs and I have seen the "bloody hand in the pocket" syndrome as well. We are currently looking at 3 different types of incentives: 1) Coat project: go 5 years without a preventable incident and you get a safety coat, 2) Team-based: team goes without an OSHA preventable recordable and the team wins lunch, merch, etc., and 3) Individual-based: if the employee goes a year without a preventable incident or a preventable OSHA recordable then they would get merch, etc.

Team incentives are nice until one of the team members gets injured in December of the reporting year. So everyone on the team is penalized because of one employee's incident at the end of the year. The injured employee can become a negative target. But I've also seen programs where just the person who had the disqualifying event loses out on the prize not to negatively penalize the rest of the team.

I remember one of our local Coal mines gave away a brand-new 4-Wheeler to 2 lucky individuals. To qualify for the prize a person could not have a preventable incident or an MSHA recordable injury and then it was a simple door prize drawing.

I am interested in this topic b/c our Safety Committee is trying to develop an incentive program at our annual retreat next month. So keep the great ideas coming!!!