The criticism with most safety recognition programs is that they are mainly reactive, and have as their focus the rewarding of a no lost time accident free record. Critics of this approach question the rationale of a system based on this focus on injuries. Some have said that the only people who determine whether or not an accident results in an injury with time lost away from work are the Workers' Compensation systems and physicians. They also say it encourages under reporting or false reporting of injuries, and does nothing to improve safety management or their associated systems.

Others claim that lost time accident free records and milestones associated with them and their rewards have nothing remotely to do with improving safety performance. Simply waiting until the end of a calendar year and giving out recognition based on "the record" is artificial. In a profession known for its clichÈs and analogies, some have likened the concept of giving safety awards for lost time accident free records to hitting a baseball. They say if you want to teach a hitter how to hit well you don't get him to emulate a 100 hitter. You get him to study a perennial all star, or a career 350 hitter like a George Brett or a John Olerud, and you try to get the hitter to do all the right things which these players are doing. Some professionals say that by using lost time accidents as your reward indicator you are actually measuring failure rates. That's not good enough.

The important issue, say most safety professionals, is determining what efforts contributed to the record, and can they be documented and duplicated? Others have suggested that one of the greatest failings of these programs is that they are designed as short term cures for long term safety issues. Peter Edmonds notes that one of his biggest challenges is to find a program which has staying power. Edmonds would like to "find some way we can maintain awareness and continuity without it becoming so repetitious that it begins to turn people off.

But Barrie Simoneau has his own thoughts about safety, awareness and behaviour. Simoneau feels that safety is nothing more than an attitude. "Everything else from there on in is production work," notes Simoneau. "Then you have to build quality into that production. If you have quality production you never need to worry about safety." 21

Careful What You Wish For

"Rewards are not actually solutions at all; they are gimmicks, shortcuts, quick fixes that mask problems and ignore reason...Giving people rewards...is an inherently objectionable way of reaching our goals by virtue of its status as a means of controlling others...What rewards and punishment do is induce compliance". 22

If, as Kohn suggests, these safety incentives and rewards are a means of controlling people, or are perceived as controlling people, this has some implications for safety. Geller notes that,

"What Kohn - and others such as the late W. Edwards Deming and Stephen R. Covey - are saying is this: Common safety tools such as incentives, recognition, praise and penalties do more harm than good in the long run because employees see that these tactics are a means of controlling behaviour. Feeling controlled, an employee's own inner motivation suffers". 23

The work of Alfie Kohn is frequently referenced by those who hold a high degree of scepticism and cynicism towards recognition and incentive programs. In his book, Punished By Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive plans, A's, Praise, and other Bribes, Kohn argues that carrots and sticks are ineffective at producing long-lasting attitudinal or behavioural changes in workers, and incentive and recognition programs produce nothing more than temporary 'compliance'. According to Kohn's research, surveys suggest that at least three out of every four U.S. corporations rely on some sort of pay-for-performance program to 'motivate' employees. But Kohn also looks at some of the past and current research on the issue, and notes that some two dozen studies from the field of social psychology have shown conclusively that people who expect to receive a reward for completing a task simply do not perforof the incentive and recognition debate centers around the fact that the key focus of these approaches deals with people, and the behaviours of people.

What's interesting about this concept is that for the most part, safety legislation in every province has as its focus the physical workplace environment. There are standards and rules and regulations governing equipment, exposure levels, machine guarding, chemical storage...the list goes on and on. Key to the legislative compliance for occupational health am as well as those who don't expect to receive anything. Additionally, Kohn asserts that in the workplace, not one controlled study, to the best of his knowledge, has ever demonstrated a long-term improvement in the quality of performance as a result of rewards. 24

If there is one piece of advice which Geller gives, it is that,

"The intent must not be to control people, but to help them control their own behaviour for the safety of themselves and others. This is why the terms such as behaviour modification, discipline and enforcement are inappropriate. They carry the connotation of outside control...The bottom line is that behaviour is motivated by consequences that are obvious and immediate." 25

The reality, however, is that these programs can eventually get corrupted into a control process. Kohn is indeed cynical when he looks at how these "reward" programs get used in an attempt to control behaviour, as we can see by the following definitions:

• ac.count.a.bil.i.ty n. the process of finding someone to blame. see "Control"
• per.form.ance ap.prais.al n. a ritual in which individuals are judged - and reminded who has more power than they do. See "Control"
• per.form.ance, pay for n. selective reinforcement used to manipulate behabior and obtain compliance. See "Control"
• rec.og.ni.tion n. selective reinforcement used to manipulate behavior and obtain compliance. See "Control"
• team play.er n. someone who does that he or she is told. See "Control"

Thomas Krause and his colleagues, in their book, The Behaviour-Based Safety Process, note that behaviour, safe or otherwise can be interpreted by examining something referred to as ABC analysis (Antecedent - Behaviour - Consequence). The antecedent (an event which triggers and objectively observable behaviour ) results in a consequence of that behaviour. If the consequences of a behaviour are positive, those behaviours will be reinforced and more than likely repeated. This is why some suggest that objective, observable behaviours and activities, rather than simple accident or injury statistics should be the focus of safety recognition. Focus on activities and behaviours, not attitudes. Attitudes are neither positive or negative. Their interpretation is often a matter of opinion, subjectivity and value judgement. Activities and behaviours, on the other hand, can be objectively identified, categorised, observed and measured. 26

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