Incentivizing Safety

Incentivizing positive behavior and rewarding employees who continuously meet or exceed expectations will help promote a positive safe work culture.

With health and safety incentives, it’s important to reward specific behaviors and not lagging safety metrics like “one year incident free” because you may be inadvertently incentivizing employees to hide incidents or not report hazards. Below are some examples of positive behaviors your organization could consider rewarding:

• Reporting a new hazard.

• Participating in worksite inspections.

• Taking a proactive action to reduce risk without being asked.

• Consistently following procedures or wearing PPE as required during worksite observations.

• Refusing unsafe work and assisting leadership in resolving the situation.

• Bringing forward ideas or concerns in safety meetings.

Many organizations struggle with effective incentivization or rewards that employees actually want. Ultimately the reward should be sufficient enough for staff to feel incentivized to repeat the desired action. Will your employees genuinely care if they are in a draw for a chance to win a $25 gift card once a month? Chances are it won’t generate the participation that is hoped for. On the other hand, you don’t want to spend too much money on incentivizing the behavior you expect from your staff.

We have found that incentive programs that give employees meaningful rewards for positive behaviors without a “draw” or “chance to win” are the most effective. There are many rewards programs available which won’t break the bank like online shops where employees can earn points for completing positive safety actions and then choose their preferred reward.

A cost-free way of incentivizing behavior is genuine appreciation from their leaders. Don’t underestimate the power of acknowledging your employees and being appreciative of their efforts.