Awards safety award programs

Monitor and maintain the company s safety awards program (accident-free miles and no lost-time injuries). Process and present awards. 

X Safety rewards — Over 75 percent of all respondent carriers have safety award programs for individual drivers. Safe drivers get promoted over imsafe drivers in over 89 percent of companies. 

Safety award programs typically do not reinforce safe behavior on the job. As noted above, awards and incentives tend to influence employees not to report injuries. Many organizations base their awards on outcome measures (injury statistics) rather than process measures—people s compliance with safety procedures on the job (McSween, 1995, p. 15). 

What kind of safety award program is in place ... 

The easiest option for creating a simple safety award program is to identify the criteria and a potential award or recognition event or perhaps a menu of awards and recognition events appropriate to the criteria. The idea is to strive for planned, yet spontaneous recognition. It is planned in that you know what pinpointed behavior or accomplishment you plan to reward, but it is spontaneous in that you do not know when the criteria will be met. These award programs resemble traditional safety awards except that employees earn the awards based on specific actions that promote safety, not by going a fixed period of time without an incident. 

Delayed Outcomes. We often create safety award programs to encourage employees to behave safely. The awards usually provide additional positive outcomes for not getting hurt but are too delayed to be effective consequences. We discussed problems with such programs earlier, yet such programs can be an effective component of a safety process. Figure 21.6 displays a more complete diagram that includes both consequences and outcomes. 

To ensure your safety awards program is well covered by the media, make sure you notify the editor or station manager ahead of time.This will allow that person to plan ahead for coverage of the awards ceremony. You should always plan your award ceremonies well in advance to prevent any miscommunications on the day of the ceremony. 

Cash awards should be avoided, especially when large amounts of cash are being used for awards. Don t misunderstand me, cash has its place. For certain members of the team, it may be the only acceptable incentive. But for safety awards programs, cash is not the best incentive. So, the lucrative incentive plans described in the beginning of this chapter need to be adjusted. We need to remove the lucrative cash awards and replace them with more reasonable awards such as articles of clothing. 

Ensure that all accidents and incidents are promptly reported, thoroughly investigated and properly recorded, and that safety award programs do not discourage reporting of any incident that must be recorded on the log. 

The guidelines and regulations cited so far have focused on process safety. However, certification and award programs such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Standard 9002, "Quality Systems— Model for Quality Assurance in Production and Installation," place heavy emphasis on quality management. Written procedures and document control are important factors for ensuring and maintaining quality, reliability, and consistency. 

Several safety and loss prevention professionals have taken community involvement to the next level by actually involving the community in their in-plant safety and loss prevention programs. For example, one safety and loss prevention professional writes a column for the local newspaper that talks about the safety and loss prevention activities of her company and other local companies. In another location, the safety and loss prevention professional published photographs of the safety award winners each month in the local newspaper. In yet another town, a safety and loss prevention professional held an open house for the community to tour the facility and learn about the company. 

Applying for safety awards to benchmark your program against others... 

An annual safety award presented to someone who has made a real difference in your safety program... 

Individual safety awards are certainly important to any safety program. However, because drivers lead a fairly independent lifestyle, all the more reason to make sure you have at least a few group rewards in your program. Doing so will help create a sense of teamwork and build stronger ties between your drivers and the company. 

An item provided to a worker, group, or organization to recognize its safety performance in accordance with an organization s goals. The award helps promote prevention of workplace injuries and illness and motivate employees to improve their safety performance. See also Safety Recognition Program. 

A program to promote on-the-job and off-the-job safety awareness by recognizing individuals and group safety achievements that achieve an organization s safety goals. See also Safety Award. 

Many companies have award programs based on safety performance statistics. Without records and reports, these programs would be impossible. Statistics based on data provide quantitative indicators of safety performance. 

The RTA has both BS OHSAS 18001 and ISO 14001 certifications. They are very active in promulgating safety among their contractors with many programs including a safety awards, including a safety personality of the year award. 

Morisey, M. 1988. Award programs reduce costs, improve worker safety records. Occupational Health and Safety, 10, 64—66. 

Use recognition and appreciation — not rewards while giving a small gift for performing certain safety activities is a commonly used element in a behavior-based employee awards program, these programs frequentiy become a check-the-box-and-get-a-prize system. While safety is a tailor-made vehicle for appreciation and recognition. 

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