One Year Without Lost Time Accident - Celebratory?
I know that rewarding employees for working injury free is frowned upon by OSHA because it could lead to injuries not being reported out of fear of ruining things for everyone else. At the same time, if 365 days do go by with no lost time accidents is it wrong to reward the entire crew for this accomplishment? Adding incentives to safety is tricky but I think for longer term accomplishments like this it seems right to do. How do you guys go about long term accomplishments?
Comments (3)
The recognition should focus on the activities that caused the improvement. More training, better planning, more supervisor safety engagement, those kinds of things. Be cautious of monetary gain as it can encourage underreporting. As long as your numbers make sense there shouldn't be a problem. You should have dramatically more first aids than medical treatment cases if employees are reporting things they don't have to. I do believe in celebrating victories, it shows the workforce that safety performance is important to management.
I like to reward the activities, not the results. But recognition of something like this couldn't hurt. I doubt someone would fail to report an injury for a year because of a slice of pizza, but that's just one man's opinion
Agree with Branden. I think if the incentive is a pay raise, or a change in year end bonus then people would neglect to report accidents. If it's just a free lunch or a company-wide shout out then the chance of that being the reason people would not report an accident is way lower.