When Safety Incentives Prove Their Merit
Safety professionals are divided about the effectiveness of offering incentives to employees for safe work performances. Those who favor incentives say they help motivate employees to work safely—and that if they’re run correctly, incentives can help improve crew-based safety, because employees will correct each other with the idea of winning the incentive.
But those who oppose incentives say they prevent employees from reporting accidents. This camp says that employees will hide accidents in order to win the incentive. “I contest that,” says Rick McCourt, safety director at Sukut Construction Inc. of Santa Ana, CA—the state’s largest grading contractor. “We’ve got probably the most creative incentive program that I know of. We have safety incentives for individuals, but we’re moving toward crew-based incentives.”
The contractor’s safety numbers support McCourt’s claims. The company’s recordable frequency index dropped from 10.5 in 2003, to 7.3 in 2004, to 5.3 in 2005, when employees worked more than 1.2 million man-hours. Similarly, Sukut’s lost workday frequency index has dropped—from about 7.0 in 2003 to just 1.5 in 2005.
“We want to reward people for being positive examples and have some fun at the end of the quarter and at the end of the year,” says McCourt. “Let’s celebrate our success.”
Safety Bingo
One of the company’s most successful crew-based incentive programs is Safety Bingo. Last year, Sukut awarded a total of $9,000 to employees for the game. To start, every employee gets a bingo card. Every day, a number is drawn. Employees can call a Bingo Hotline to get the day’s number, or foremen call out the number at morning safety huddles.
The opening prize money is $1,000. If someone on a given crew has an accident, the entire crew is dinged out of the game. And if there’s a recordable injury on a given day, no number is drawn for that day, and the award drops to $500. First-aid incidents like minor cuts don’t count.
When someone wins a bingo and gets the $1,000, the game resets—this time with $2,000 in the jackpot. For every game played with a zero-accident record across the company, the bingo jackpot doubles. About once a month, someone wins the bingo game—and is recognized with his picture in the company’s monthly safety newsletter.
“There’s no limit to the doubling,” says McCourt. “The incentive is to get crew members to watch out for each other and correct each other if they see somebody doing an unsafe act. We expect employees to do on-the-spot corrections of each other.”
Sukut also has a program of quarterly safety lunches. “If a job site goes for three months with no accidents, we buy a catered lunch for everybody,” says McCourt. “This is for zero injuries and zero equipment accidents. Our chief executive officer, Mike Crawford, tries to attend every one of these lunches. He considers himself the company’s chief safety officer. All project executives, including the project engineer, the project manager, and the division president, also attend this catered safety lunch.”
Superintendent’s Award
Sukut has five divisions and about 70 foremen. Each quarter, the foremen in each division compete for the Superintendent’s Award, which is given quarterly for a foreman who has had zero accidents on his crew.
For purposes of the Superintendent’s Award, the five divisions are grouped into three: an equipment division (all of the mechanics); a combination of the public works and environmental divisions; and the grading division (divided into a northern and a southern group).
Each quarter, three foremen are recognized as winners of the Superintendent’s Award for accident-free records. The foremen gain recognition at the company’s quarterly safety meeting for each division. The prize is a $100 gift certificate and an acrylic hardhat engraved with the foreman’s name.
Those 12 winning foremen then win the right to compete for the annual President’s Award. “At the end of the year, we have a big holiday event, and we invite all of those foremen and their wives to a resort hotel,” says McCourt. “We have dinner, an open bar, a band, dancing, and everybody stays in the hotel that night.”
The President’s Award goes to recognize the most deserving safety-minded foreman/manager of the year. McCourt says he has input into the selection, but the final call belongs to Crawford. The winner gets a $1,000 gift certificate and last year won a monogrammed jacket with “2006 President’s Award Winner” on it.
Safety Raffle
For hourly field workers, Sukut has a safety raffle that is awarded on an individual basis. To have your name in the drawing, you must be a full-time employee and have worked 450 hours for the quarter. You must be injury free and have had no equipment accidents. A drawing is held each quarter based on a random computerized selection process.
The first quarter, the winner receives $1,000. The second quarter, everyone who went accident free gets two chances in the raffle, and the prize is $2,000.
The third quarter, all accident-free people are in the raffle and the award jumps to $3,000—and to $4,000 the fourth quarter. This year the company has about 400 full-time employees but just won a major project, so that number will climb.
“The raffle program has been pretty effective, but when you space the awards out over a quarter, I’m not sure you get as much bang for the buck as we should,” says McCourt.
McCourt even has an incentive to read the safety newsletter, which features news of all these programs. On the back page of every newsletter is printed the photo of an employee’s license plate.
Foremen are excluded from this, but can have input into whose license plate gets selected. Safety-minded employees are chosen to have their license plates printed. When the employee sees his license plate, he can claim a $50 gift certificate.
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And finally, McCourt writes up the best near-miss accidents in the newsletter. Sukut gives out a $50 gift certificate for those near misses—and the lesson learned. That award is McCourt’s call. “We don’t give out $50 for every near miss,” he says.
Daniel C. Brown owns TechniComm, a communications business in Illinois.
GEC - September/October 2007
Author's Bio: Daniel C. Brown is the owner of TechniComm, a communications business based in Des Plaines, IL.
September-October 2007
When Safety Incentives Prove Their Merit
Safety professionals are divided about the effectiveness of offering incentives to employees for safe work performances. Those who favor incentives say they help motivate employees to work safely—and that if they’re run correctly, incentives can help improve crew-based safety, because employees will correct each other with the idea of winning the incentive.
But those who oppose incentives say they prevent employees from reporting accidents. This camp says that employees will hide accidents in order to win the incentive. “I contest that,” says Rick McCourt, safety director at Sukut Construction Inc. of Santa Ana, CA—the state’s largest grading contractor. “We’ve got probably the most creative incentive program that I know of. We have safety incentives for individuals, but we’re moving toward crew-based incentives.”
The contractor’s safety numbers support McCourt’s claims. The company’s recordable frequency index dropped from 10.5 in 2003, to 7.3 in 2004, to 5.3 in 2005, when employees worked more than 1.2 million man-hours. Similarly, Sukut’s lost workday frequency index has dropped—from about 7.0 in 2003 to just 1.5 in 2005.
“We want to reward people for being positive examples and have some fun at the end of the quarter and at the end of the year,” says McCourt. “Let’s celebrate our success.”
Safety Bingo
One of the company’s most successful crew-based incentive programs is Safety Bingo. Last year, Sukut awarded a total of $9,000 to employees for the game. To start, every employee gets a bingo card. Every day, a number is drawn. Employees can call a Bingo Hotline to get the day’s number, or foremen call out the number at morning safety huddles.
The opening prize money is $1,000. If someone on a given crew has an accident, the entire crew is dinged out of the game. And if there’s a recordable injury on a given day, no number is drawn for that day, and the award drops to $500. First-aid incidents like minor cuts don’t count.
When someone wins a bingo and gets the $1,000, the game resets—this time with $2,000 in the jackpot. For every game played with a zero-accident record across the company, the bingo jackpot doubles. About once a month, someone wins the bingo game—and is recognized with his picture in the company’s monthly safety newsletter.
“There’s no limit to the doubling,” says McCourt. “The incentive is to get crew members to watch out for each other and correct each other if they see somebody doing an unsafe act. We expect employees to do on-the-spot corrections of each other.”
Sukut also has a program of quarterly safety lunches. “If a job site goes for three months with no accidents, we buy a catered lunch for everybody,” says McCourt. “This is for zero injuries and zero equipment accidents. Our chief executive officer, Mike Crawford, tries to attend every one of these lunches. He considers himself the company’s chief safety officer. All project executives, including the project engineer, the project manager, and the division president, also attend this catered safety lunch.”
Superintendent’s Award
Sukut has five divisions and about 70 foremen. Each quarter, the foremen in each division compete for the Superintendent’s Award, which is given quarterly for a foreman who has had zero accidents on his crew.
For purposes of the Superintendent’s Award, the five divisions are grouped into three: an equipment division (all of the mechanics); a combination of the public works and environmental divisions; and the grading division (divided into a northern and a southern group).
Each quarter, three foremen are recognized as winners of the Superintendent’s Award for accident-free records. The foremen gain recognition at the company’s quarterly safety meeting for each division. The prize is a $100 gift certificate and an acrylic hardhat engraved with the foreman’s name.
Those 12 winning foremen then win the right to compete for the annual President’s Award. “At the end of the year, we have a big holiday event, and we invite all of those foremen and their wives to a resort hotel,” says McCourt. “We have dinner, an open bar, a band, dancing, and everybody stays in the hotel that night.”
The President’s Award goes to recognize the most deserving safety-minded foreman/manager of the year. McCourt says he has input into the selection, but the final call belongs to Crawford. The winner gets a $1,000 gift certificate and last year won a monogrammed jacket with “2006 President’s Award Winner” on it.
Safety Raffle
For hourly field workers, Sukut has a safety raffle that is awarded on an individual basis. To have your name in the drawing, you must be a full-time employee and have worked 450 hours for the quarter. You must be injury free and have had no equipment accidents. A drawing is held each quarter based on a random computerized selection process.
The first quarter, the winner receives $1,000. The second quarter, everyone who went accident free gets two chances in the raffle, and the prize is $2,000.
The third quarter, all accident-free people are in the raffle and the award jumps to $3,000—and to $4,000 the fourth quarter. This year the company has about 400 full-time employees but just won a major project, so that number will climb.
“The raffle program has been pretty effective, but when you space the awards out over a quarter, I’m not sure you get as much bang for the buck as we should,” says McCourt.
McCourt even has an incentive to read the safety newsletter, which features news of all these programs. On the back page of every newsletter is printed the photo of an employee’s license plate.
Foremen are excluded from this, but can have input into whose license plate gets selected. Safety-minded employees are chosen to have their license plates printed. When the employee sees his license plate, he can claim a $50 gift certificate.
And finally, McCourt writes up the best near-miss accidents in the newsletter. Sukut gives out a $50 gift certificate for those near misses—and the lesson learned. That award is McCourt’s call. “We don’t give out $50 for every near miss,” he says.
Daniel C. Brown owns TechniComm, a communications business in Illinois.
GEC - September/October 2007