“We don’t need to reward safe performance. We give our employees a paycheck and they deserve nothing more for working safely. It’s part of their job.”
If it’s true that no deserves a bonus in return for doing what is expected, then why are Fortune 500 CEO’s given year-end bonuses based on company performance? Why is it fair to reward them for performance while ignoring the efforts of the thousands of hourly employees below them?
“Rewards do not effect the attitudes that underlie unsafe behavior. They merely cause employees not to report injury.”
Actually, many safety incentive programs now reward employees for reporting injuries. Employees are recognized and then rewarded for reporting and correcting unsafe acts and conditions before injuries can even occur. Other programs offer incentives for taking pro-active safety steps such as attending safety meetings and passing safety inspections.
“With a reward program, management ignores the true cause of the problem. Rewards discourage changing the safety system.”
W.R. Grace documented over 1800 bright ideas from it’s employees, with over 50% of these ideas centered on improving processes and procedures involving safety.
“Safety rewards are unnecessary. All employees have intrinsic motivation and should be willing to do a job safely for the compensation received.”
In a study by Dr. Kenneth Kovach, quoted in Bob Nelson’s book: 1001 Ways to Reward Employees, recognition for a job well done is the single most important factor in employee job satisfaction.
Those same employees said 68% of the time that they were not recognized enough by upper management. In another survey, employees who leave a job or quit a job consistently rank lack of recognition and praise as the primary reason for leaving. So recognizing employees for being safe fills a vital need that all of us have.
Further, the Workmen’s Compensation system is a temptation many employees cannot resist. Workmen’s Comp is an incentive program that rewards people who don’t return to work. Many companies report that a healthy safety incentive program helps combat the temptation of Work Comp fraud.
Clearly, no one knows all the secrets of human nature and employee motivation. It’s a constantly changing and highly complex subject. But that’s what makes it so intriguing. One thing can be said for sure: companies experimenting and learning how to use incentives and recognition often significantly improve safety much more rapidly than companies which do not. And these companies also have higher morale and lower turnover than companies who think managing people is only about cutting a paycheck every other week.