Safety Incentive Program - Research Paper Example

Safety Incentive Program Introduction Many organizations have experienced losses due to worker compensation resulting from frequent injuries due to lack of safety programs in such organizations. As a result, safety authorities have resorted to give incentives in order to entice employees to follow the safety guidelines and report injury cases. There has been a recent scrutiny and analysis of safety programs in organizations by the United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration in order to ascertain their effectiveness in the organizations. Many previous studies on safety incentive programs emphasized the undependable and anecdotal evidence that assesses the advantages and disadvantages of applying incentives on safety programs. The long term impact of the safety incentive program on the construction of safety in the intervention period has remained hesitant. In general, safety incentive program aims to reduce the losses of the organizations resulting from the work injuries and accidents (Bako, Kaufeld & Flynn, 2012). Reducing occupational accidents, injury incidents and work down through rewards and application of incentive on safety program archetypical concern in many organizations. In the process of setting the goals, every single employee is involved especially the top management as a safety incentive program is all inclusive. It is a moral boost to have every particular employee at the same level. All workers therefore need to be motivated to get involved by providing ideas or rewarding employees who identifies safety hazards. Safety incentive program that are considered effective outlines achievable goals, objectives, and assigns responsibility and obligations to employees and management, and implements the safety program goals. In the determination of safety program goals, much focus and emphasis is put where the occupational accidents and work injuries are taking place. Again, the work time lost due to the injuries in the workplace is intensely analyzed. Through doing this, focus areas are identified and required backgrounds are determined so as to set reasonable objectives that will lead to the accomplishment of the safety incentive goals (Sheehy, 2004). This paper seeks to discuss the safety incentive program in terms of creation, building, implementation, evaluation, and its pros and cons. When organizations seek to implement a safety incentive program, the practically help in promoting the interest and concern of employees through the safety program. This in turn helps in building commitment among the workers in the organizations. The organization therefore needs to put their emphasis on the constituents of the safety incentive program in order to achieve the intended goals of the safety program. The management of the organization needs to notice that incentives alone are not actual replacement of an effective safety program itself. Before the commencement of safety program implementation, the organization should identify and ensure that the program has all the constituents of an effective safety incentive program (Bako, Kaufeld & Flynn, 2012). The constituents to look for include: Rules at work determine the expectations of the management concerning the job performance and areas of conduct affecting safety at the workplace. A policy of safety program stating clearly the commitment of the company to provide a safe environment for visitors, employees and customers A continuous involvement and support of the top management in activities that promote safety; such activities may range from safety trainings, safety meetings in which management are participants. Procedures and policies of safety programs that the expectations of the management team concerning the responsibilities and accountabilities of the employees for workplace safety Efficient procedures for use in appropriate application of counteractive action that range from disciplinary actions to training actions, where the workers do not follow or comply with the safety team expectation. A designation of people who have accountability and responsibility for workplace safety monitoring through inspections and activities of audit at regular intervals A program of performance appraisal entailing the evaluation of the safety performance of all the workers A committee of safety incentive program that are responsible for analyzing and evaluating occupational accidents and incidents and seek ways to avoid them in the future The safety incentive program seeks to increase the employee awareness on safety procedures and issues, and should not be aimed at winning rewards. Hence, the organizations find it necessary gain foundation on which to build the safety incentive program. In case that is not achieved, then the major goal of the safety program which is to ensure workers are safe and reduce the costs of injuries and occupational accidents either directly or indirectly will not be achieved (Abid & Kumar, 2013). Creating effective a safety incentive program involves numerous conventional phases. The preferred approach of creating an organizational safety incentive program depend on several factors: the number of employees in the organization; the nature of the organizational operations; the size of the organizational operations; the budget of the organization; the number of job sites and work locations; and whether or not the organization management will involve all the workers in the safety incentive program. Regardless of the mentioned factors, there are specific and conventional guiding principles that are applicable to all the organizational safety incentive programs (Sheehy, 2004). Therefore in order to create an effective organizational safety incentive program, the organization needs to follow the following guiding principles: These are the major guidelines in building an effective safety incentive program: Determination and setting the goal and objective of the safety incentive program: the organization management should decide the reason why the safety incentive program is being created. For instance, an organization may need to minimize the compensation packages through reducing the number of worker injuries. If the organization is at the stage of implementing the formal principles of safety program, the goal may be to reinforce such principles of safety. The management may also want to maximize productivity through decreasing the number of workdays lost may be part of the goal of an organization. Select the participants to include a safety incentive program: the worker that is required to participate in the program need to be done in order to accomplish the safety program objective and goal. For instance, when there is a high number of claims of respiratory diseases, then clerical workers need not be included in the safety program, an organization may need to involve workers who are required to use respirators in executing their duties. Establish the theme of the safety incentive program: developing attention on which the safety program is founded constantly remind those involved about the primary goal that the safety program intends to accomplish. Decide on appropriate prizes with a motivating value: the value and price of the safety incentive program need not be expensive, but should have worth and meaning to the employees. Program prizes that make the game theme durable is very efficient and effective, for example the work shoes, safety glasses, hard hats among others. Decide on the period duration and length of the safety incentive program: the duration of the safety incentive program should last for a specific period and should be sporadic. The experts of safety incentive program in their studies recommend that competent idea will take significantly a long period of time, and that organizations need to have numerous ideas that last shorter periods of time with the main program heading. Eventually, this maintains the interest of workers and allows the management to stress several issues of safety at workplace. The goal of the safety incentive program is communicated effectively: the safety incentive program should be relevant to the work abilities and experience of all the involved workers participating in the safety program. The safety incentive program also need to recognize work safety as more important than the worth and meaning of the prize. The safety incentive program should convey to its establishers such as safety directors, management and the committee on safety, the enthusiasm of its implementation and to the public such as the workers and the supervisors, the people for whom the safety program was developed and designed (Sheehy, 2004). even though all safety incentive programs are unique and special in their own way, all successful safety programs share common elements that include: a specific focus or theme, a specific goal, a budget, a means of recording performance towards the goal, support and involvement of the top management, specific limits and rules, a design the enhances a continued interest, determination of the judges and participants, a special kickoff, a means of telling workers concerning the standings and/ or performance, promotion among all the workers, communication of the final performance and standings, management recognition of the efforts of the workers, and announcement of winners. It is very essential to the management to ensure that the prizes and program rewards are not so huge that the main goal changes to be the prize winning program and not of improving safety (Abid & Kumar, 2013). As described earlier in creating effective safety incentive program, there are quite a number of approaches in creating effective safety incentive program. In the same way management need to consider the constituents of effective safety incentive program before its implementation, there are essential stages and phases that need to be followed in order to make a safety incentive program. These stages make the characteristics of an effective safety incentive program in the workplace. Some of these stages involve: gaining a proactive participation and support from management. This is because where the management do not believe in the safety incentive program and provide no support at all to it, the employees will not be supportive too. Workers must hence have trust in the program and this can only be obtained by strong and active role and presence of management. Workers must gain belief from the program developers that the safety incentive program is fair, the program will be well administered, and that they stand to win and achieve the reward. If this is not the case, the employees will not at all support the program (Goodrum & Gangwer, 2004). If organizations fail to administer well developed guidelines of the safety incentive program fairly, the primary goal of the safety incentive program may ultimately fail to be achieved. Employees in most cases will judge the program performance on how fair or well it is administered. This is not a simple work; the administration of a safety incentive program is a complex process occurring at the point of fervor is weakening and time is also running out. The longer the duration of the safety incentive program and the larger the number of participants, the more crucial the step is. However, the significance of administration cannot be exaggerated. This in most cases result into abandoning of the process of administration (Goodrum & Gangwer, 2004). The management needs to put in place a complete and functioning safety incentive program. Regarding this, a safety incentive program is particularly one level of an effective safety incentive program. There is no definite universal remedy for an insufficient process of safety management nor can it substitute any section of a safety program. Where employees are not trained in ways of recognizing and mitigating exposures and hazards, safety incentives simply end up being bribes in order to underreport or ignore injuries. Organizational employees are not able to improve performance where there are not trained properly in order to perform their duties or even if such employees have no specific ideas of what is expected from them in a safety program (Goodrum & Gangwer, 2004). Corrective measures must therefore be made in order to minimize injuries before considering a safety incentive program, injuries will continue if this is not done at similar rates as earlier experienced, because the original causes have not been managed. It is also important to consider examining the organizational safety performance in the workplace. Where accidents are higher than the average expectation, then the safety incentive program is not properly working or the implementation is failing. In addition, through adding safety incentives to a safety program that is poorly functioning, accidents and injury incidents may be underreported in pursuit of the set rewards. Employees need to be reminded continually concerning the safety incentive program, the major reason for the program, and how the program is doing. Most importantly, employees need to see the support and involvement of management through their active coaching and participation. The organization should also ensure effective communication concerning the program in the implementation period. Safety incentive program therefore need effective communication both from the developers, implementers, management and employees in general in order to remain effective and functional. Employees need to understand perfectly why the safety program is being created and implemented, how it works, the rules involved, and the way the program progress is measured (Resnick, 2009). It is also important to consider aspects such as employee active role in the safety program. Passive approach to safety incentive program requires minimal involvement of the employees that result from lack of required action, thus, no change in any behavior. The management of organizations need to structure safety incentive program. The goals set, rewards selecting, and administrative process developed. For effectiveness of the program, the rewards need to be tailored in order t fit the workforce. When this is not, it is not likely that incentive program would be inspirational to any particular employee. The rewards must therefore have value to the employees and not the management in particular. The goals of a safety incentive program are pivotal because if they are highly set, for instance as an all or nothing approach, initial malfunction will definitely discourage participation; if the goals are set at low levels, there will be no particular efforts needed, hence no specific changes in action in order to gain the set rewards. Therefore the goals of a safety incentive program must be defined clearly and measured easily (Sparer & Dennerlein, 2013). The money power is strong; however, other things such as time off and gift certificates can be powerful too. It is also essential to identify and determine the way in which the program will be maintained and run. This involves the manner in which the safety incentive program records will be maintained, reporting and monitoring methods, the methods of measuring performance, and the whole process of providing rewards. All such elements need to be viewed as fair and fit together by all the employees, otherwise resentment may be experienced (Sparer & Dennerlein, 2013). Conclusion In summary, the safety incentive programs have received significant criticisms from some critics. The safety incentive program has been noted as a major element that contributes to formation of bribery and corruption. Those opposed to the safety incentive program have pointed out that safety incentives are basically relied on for reasons such as: management needs to feel good, and this is quickly accomplished by giving things away to get the reputation they want; and the safety professionals do not practically know the ways of reducing accidents and worker injuries and therefore they resort to worker bribery. The safety program has been termed as promoting concealment of worker injuries rather than changing work behavior. The safety incentive program has received critiques as a move to influence workers. The safety incentive program is perceived as manipulative controls that lead to underreport injuries (Sparer & Dennerlein, 2013). Safety incentive program is particularly a way of showing that the organization is much caring to the workers and recognizes the work safety procedures that employees employ in their work. Scholars in the field of safety incentive programs believe that the application of safety incentive programs at workplace promotes and encourages safe behavior. Long term attitudes may be altered through developing heightened awareness of safety program and offering financial rewards for an appropriate behavior and action. Safety incentive program have remained advantageous to most workplaces. This ultimately improves employee morale and minimizes the compensation costs of workers. The advocates of safety incentive program recommend that in order to be effective and efficient, safety incentive program need to be established properly, maintained and implemented. Malfunction of safety incentive program to establish a change desired in safety behavior is often attributable to faults made in the process of implementation. The failures most common in implementation of a safety incentive program include improper administration that is often related to an administration system that is overburdened and struggling to cope with huge requirements of paperwork, and the loss of commitment by management which leads to a breakdown in eroding funding and enthusiasm. The advocates believe that discounting such safety programs would lead to the creation of more difficulties: our culture is so woven by safety incentives; in addition, the supporters of safety incentive program strongly believe that safety incentive programs have no particular harm, even if no direct help can be attributed from them (Abid & Kumar, 2013). This paper has discussed the safety incentive program. References Abid, H & Kumar, J. (2013), Safety incentive and penalty provisions in Indian construction projects and their impact on safety performance, International Journal of Injury Control & Safety Promotion, Vol. 20 Issue 1, p3-12 Bako, Gregg; Kaufeld, Karen; Flynn, Richard (2012). Workplace Solutions, Safety & Health, Vol. 186 Issue 2, p54-56 Goodrum, Paul M; Gangwer, Manish. (2004). Safety Incentives, Professional Safety, Vol. 49 Issue 7, p24-34 Resnick, Marc. (2009). Safety Incentive Programs, Professional Safety, Vol. 54 Issue 7, p46-48 Sheehy, Edward J. (2004). Effective Safety Incentives, Professional Safety, Vol. 49 Issue 2, p40 48 Sparer, Emily H.; Dennerlein, Jack T (2013). Determining safety inspection thresholds for employee incentive programs on construction sites, Safety Science, Vol. 51 Issue 1, p77-84. Read More