Quality safety celebrations

Many organizations celebrate when their injury rate reaches a record low. Organizations often give groups of employees a celebration dinner after a certain number of weeks or months pass with no recordable injury. Going several months without an injury is certainly worth celebrating, but you had better be sure injury-free was reached fairly. If people cheat to win by not reporting their injuries, the celebration will not mean much. 

If a celebration for record-low injuries is annmmced as an incentive, motivation to cheat increases. In other words, when managers promise employees a reward for working 

Most of the safety celebrations I have seen give far too little attention to the journey or processes that enabled the record reduction in injuries. Too often the focus is on the end result, like having no injuries for a certain period of time, with little discussion about how this outcome was achieved. It is natural to toast the bottom line, but there is more to be gained from taking the opportunity to recognize the process. 

Valuable direction and motivation can be obtained from pointing out aspects of the journey which made it possible to reach a safety milestone. Participants learn what they need to do in order to continue a successful process. Those who performed the behaviors identified as contributing to the injury prevention receive a boost in self-effectiveness, personal control, and optimism. They also add information to their intrapersonal dialogues for later self-motivation. The most important reason for pinpointing journey activities that lead to injury prevention is it gives credit where credit is owed. Focusing on the process credits the people and their behaviors that made the difference. 

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Providing positive consequences wiU be most effective for improving your process, that is, for supporting quality observations, participation, and goal achievement (see guidelines for recognition and celebrations at the end of this chapter). In fact, consequences for most safety practices are difficult to manipulate. Adding... 

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