Our History: The "Safety Pays" Story

Safety Pays was never developed to be sold. Instead, this enormously successful safety incentive program was developed, in-house, at one of the largest seafood processing and distribution facilities on the West Coast -- with spectacular results: a 90% reduction in claims.

When Seth Marshall, the designer of Safety Pays arrived in his new post as Executive Vice President at Santa Monica Seafood in the late 1980's, the Company had a loss ratio of 122% and was averaging 1 claim for every 3 employees per year. The result? Workers' comp premiums for its workforce of 100 employees exceeded $330,000 per year!

Management at Santa Monica Seafood implemented a number of conventional strategies including a top-to-bottom corporate safety program which included safety training, the formation of a safety committee, acquisition of safety equipment, plant inspections, etc. To their great disappointment, all of these efforts had only a marginal impact on workers' comp claims.

It was then that Marshall realized that without the employees' cooperation and commitment, Santa Monica Seafood would never succeed at lowering its claims exposure.

The issue then was to find the means by which he could motivate the workforce to make this goal as important to them as it was to management. Unfortunately, the only approaches the marketplace had to offer were either ineffective or prohibitively expensive.

So he proceeded to develop a comprehensive employee incentive program of his own called "Safety Pays" incorporating all of the necessary elements to keep his people both focused and responsive. The results were astounding! Utilizing the program, Santa Monica Seafood achieved an annual loss ratio of less than 10% while the average number of claims each year was reduced by nearly 90%!

Because Safety Pays is extremely flexible in its design, the Company has been able to maintain long-term interest and involvement by the workers through the regular infusion of fresh and entertaining incentive perks. The key has been tying individual rewards to group achievement within a framework which promotes employee participation on a daily basis.

By doing this, the Safety Pays program shifts the burden of claims control from management to the workforce as a whole. A company's workers both willingly and happily accept the responsibility because now there's something in it for them. And because Safety Pays incorporates bonus rewards for employee communication, a level of respect and rapport has evolved which before was unimaginable.

The obvious question then was, "Could this same program be as effective in other companies as it has been at Santa Monica Seafood?" Since 1991, nearly 10,000 companies have answered with a resounding "Yes!"

Businesses in virtually every commercial and industrial setting have found the same level of success as was our experience. Safety Pays has allowed them to not only raise employee safety awareness to an all time high, but has also facilitated the creation of a healthy peer group pressure which makes filing questionable claims socially unacceptable.

The lesson in all this is simple: A company's workers' compensation dilemma begins and ends with its employees. Therefore, any solution must enlist their full support and participation. The key is for management to provide a system of incentives and rewards which allow its employees to directly benefit from their successful efforts.

As they say in the seafood business, "you bait the hook to suit the fish". By doing so, not only will a company's workers' comp claims exposure be dramatically reduced, but management will have the motivational momentum to overcome any number of employee-related issues.