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Congratulations, you have taken steps to ensure your
business has provided an environment designed to protect
the health and safety of all your workers. Yet how can
you be assured your employees will use this safety
knowledge and what is the organization’s role in
continuing to support the “safety climate”?
It’s
hard to fight unsafe behaviours when
employees experience positive, instant and conditional
rewards. For example, not wearing protective equipment
may mean the employee is more comfortable, some may go
months or even years without wearing safety goggles and
never experience an eye injury. Safe actions, such as
mopping up spills may require a slowdown in the work
process which sometimes results in negative
consequences like a “Warning to speed things up”!
It’s seldom that a worker gets a pat on the back for
practicing proper lifting techniques or even when their
safe habits are recognized, the award may be based on a
safety behaviour practiced well over a year ago!
Management needs to motivate “consistent safety
behaviour”; making it a priority on everyone’s mind.
It’s time to institute positive, immediate and
dependable consequences that are associated with safe
working procedures. This can be accomplished by
feedback or incentive based programs. When given a
choice between these two methods - employees felt that
the immediate and increased positive feedback from
supervisors meant upper management was more in tuned to
creating, maintaining and actively participating in
achieving a positive “safety climate”.
If
incentives are the way you want to go then, remember:
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feedback alone may be enough of an
incentive
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the incentive should reflect positive
safety behaviours, not the outcome of the overall
number of reduced incidents or injuries
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all employees are eligible to obtain
incentive rewards and
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the incentives are to be meaningful
Giving
workers the ability to work safely (training programs),
the motivation (positive feedback) and the opportunity
(supportive environment) is an excellent model for
achievable safety behaviour.
Reference:
1.
Kelloway, K.E. and Francis, L. Management of
Occupational Health and Safety. Fourth Edition. Nelson
Education Ltd., 2008.
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