Workplace Safety Incentives Since 1991
As virtually everyone knows, a winning team’s success is due in large part to solid leadership and quality guidance. Even the most talented group of individuals, committed though they may be, are unlikely to come out on top without the knowledge, insight and commitment good leadership provides.
Therefore, it’s critical to not only secure the employees’ dedication to workers’ comp claims reduction, but the commitment of the supervisory staff as well.
Now in most cases, this would not seem to be any kind of issue. After all, any worker who has been elevated to a supervisory role has proven both his/her abilities as well as a strong loyalty to the company.
But let’s face it, we’re all human; meaning, we respond in direct proportion to the extent to which we’re motivated. Granted, pride and a sense of duty will count for something, but a company is short-changing itself if it sets up a system of incentives for its workers while leaving the supervisory staff out.
As most of our customers know, the Safety Pays program is designed to be applied primarily to the rank and file employees. This is done primarily to avoid any conflict when a supervisor hands out a safety violation eliminating a worker from further game play.
But we encourage our client companies to take one of several suggested approaches to include the supervisory staff. In larger companies (those with 20 or more supervisors), often an additional Safety Pays program application is purchased just for management level personnel.
Although providing this separate program for supervisors is a workable solution, we believe it’s much more effective to connect supervisor safety incentives directly into the motivational reward program provided to the workforce.
By linking the supervisors’ incentives to the success of those employees for whom they’re responsible, an impetus is created which motivates the supervisors to do everything within their power to ensure the overall safety effort succeeds. At Safety Pays, we offer two primary techniques to accomplish this:
DATE CERTAIN METHOD: The Safety Pays program is designed to provide a progressive jackpot to the employees which grows larger as each accident/injury free day goes by. The "date certain" method of supervisory incentives provides that on certain dates during a given program year, whether it’s quarterly or semi-annually, the supervisors will be rewarded exactly what’s in the jackpot on those dates.
JACKPOT GOAL METHOD: This recommended approach provides the supervisors specific dollar incentives which are rewarded on the day the employees’ jackpot reaches certain levels (eg. $100/$150/$200/etc.).
Many companies prefer this alternative because as each level is approached and surpassed, the supervisors becomes increasingly vested in making sure their workers are taking every precaution to avoid accidents and injuries.
In each of these cases, whether the supervisors split what’s in the jackpot at the time the incentive is reached, or each individually receives the jackpot amount, is up to the company’s senior management.
The point is the supervisory staff’s commitment to workers’ comp claims reduction is intensified by making them aware that their financial incentives are directly connected to the extent to which the people they oversee are able to reduce if not eliminate accident/injury claims.
These approaches are not mutually exclusive. Some companies might utilize the "date certain" approach but provide supervisors a financial kicker if the workforce hits certain records in terms of consecutive accident/injury free days.
In addition, because each of our client companies is in its own way unique, there’s absolutely no reason senior management can’t creatively come up with its own set of supervisor incentives.
The main thing is to get the supervisory staff as completely integrated into the employees’ efforts to reduce claims as possible. By linking effective employee teamwork with motivated leadership, unbelievable loss control success can be achieved.