Proving the ROI of Safety Incentive Programs
In an ideal world, you wouldn’t have to keep reminding your workers to follow company safety policies and procedures. The desire to prevent injuries and illnesses—to themselves and co-workers— would be incentive enough to ensure safe behaviour and compliance with the rules. But in case you haven’t noticed, we don’t live in an ideal world. In our world, workers don’t automatically engage in safe behaviour, even though it’s in their own interest to do so. Thus, it’s often necessary to coerce and coax workers to work safely and in accordance with the rules.
To coax workers, companies often offer incentives such as prizes, vacation days or cash, for safe behaviour. But incentive programs are a somewhat controversial topic in the safety industry. If you’re thinking of adopting such a program, there are certain questions you need to consider. Notably, do incentive programs really work? And how in the world do you persuade upper management that spending money on an incentive program will pay off for the company?
One way to answer these questions is to look at the experience of other companies that have incentive plans. We’ll tell you about the success of one such company that offers an interesting perspective on how incentive programs can be crafted and used to improve overall safety performance. We’ll also show you how to use the company’s experience as a case study to sell your own incentive program to upper management.
