Program Design - Motivational Basics

The Safety Pays program is based on one fundamental principle: Human beings respond most directly to whatever is in their self-interest -- and as specifically applied to their employment... whatever is in their self-interest.

The premise behind Safety Pays is simple: An employee works at a job in order to make money. To advance and make more, he intensifies his output both in terms of the quantity and quality of his work. Certainly then, the odds for achieving the goal of claims reduction and increased safety is vastly increased if each employee knows whatever effort he contributes will be rewarded.

Safety Pays is therefore designed to link certain employee financial incentives in direct proportion to the extent to which claims exposure is reduced. Although this is accomplished through a number of dollar motivations, the primary mechanism is "bingo," a game with which virtually every person is intimately familiar and enjoys.

The reason the Safety Pays use of bingo succeeds as an incentive device lies in the simplicity of its application. Every employee is a participant. Because bingo is purely a game of chance, every employee has an equal opportunity to win. For game specifics, please see How Safety Pays Works.

The Safety Pays motivational approach works because it targets employee self-interest while creating an atmosphere which unites everyone toward a common goal. A sense of teamwork and "esprit de corp" grows as each person realizes that the way to preserve the ever-growing pot of money is to watch each other and work together to reduce the possibility of someone being hurt. A healthy peer group pressure is created to avoid taking short-cuts in one's approach to doing a job safely. More importantly, the individual who at one time alleged the occasional backache in order to get a couple of extra days off, will be hard-pressed to do so when his co-workers are anticipating a financial windfall by winning a jackpot.

Having established such an environment, the Safety Pays program has a number of additional motivational tools which only further enhance the opportunity for claims reduction. Second only to an employee's desire to make money is his need for recognition and appreciation by both his employer and fellow workers. To meet these needs, the Safety Pays program provides winner acknowledgements which are posted at the conclusion of each game, as well as any number of ways to recognize individual achievement.

As an example, Safety Pays has installed a unique feature which rewards those employees who bring safety suggestions to the attention of management. Utilizing a "bonus" application already incorporated into the game formula, those employees who make the effort to bring positive safety changes to the workplace are rewarded with extra bingo cards which not only double their chances to win, but provide "guaranteed bonus dollars" should any employee win with such a card.

Furthermore, these employees are "recognized" during each game by having their names written on the "Master Game Board" along with the amount of guaranteed bonus dollars available to them should they win. Rewarding such positive behavior reinforces the individual employee's effort and has a dramatic ripple effect on his co-workers. Anxious for the additional opportunities to win and hungry for the recognition that making a safety suggestion can bring, other workers soon follow suit. In other words, nothing breeds success like success itself.

In very little time, a company which may have earlier found itself at odds with its employees over worker's compensation costs, is now a cohesive team working with a sense of unity and enthusiasm toward a common goal. Quite literally, through the use of Safety Pays, what was once a tremendous liability becomes an incredibly valuable asset. In addition to the dramatic savings in workers' comp premium costs, an environment has been established which is more productive and responsive to the company's needs.