The practice of rewarding or recognising employees for safety has been a long standing tradition in numerous organisations. Its origins may not be clear, but for whatever reason most safety people have used them in one form or another. One interesting observation I did make in researching this issue is that a lot of what we see in Canada, and a lot of the popular literature and text books which reference safety incentive awards appear to be U.S. in origin, and I was not able to find a considerable amount of original research or information from a Canadian perspective on this issue. This is not to suggest that ideas which originate from the U.S. and influenced by American culture cannot practically translate on the Canadian scene; however, the fact is that there is a clear distinction between the Canadian and U.S. culture, and some have suggested this cultural change has the potential to impact on safety, and the ways in which we perceive management and worker involvement in safety, including theories of accident causation systems for prevention, and safety incentives. That's perhaps a topic for further exploration.

While the intentions of these recognition or incentive programs were honourable, they were often ill-designed and thought out, and were based to a large degree on the principles of behaviour modification and motivation, by individuals with just a cursory or passing knowledge of 'behavioural' issues. The two primary approaches used in behaviour modification programs are to first attempt to eliminate unwanted behaviours which may lead to accidents or injuries, or to create acceptable new responses.

While these principles may have been sound, when administered by people with only a fleeting knowledge of how these principles work, they sometimes brought the exact opposite of what they were intended to achieve. Like the saying goes, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. But the real debate centres around how effective these programs are, and do they really help improve safety. There are many opinions which both support and shoot down the safety recognition theory, but what real evidence exists, and what is the most conclusive evidence? There are academic studies which focus on the theory of human behaviour, and there are workplaces which work with these programs.

A 1988 publication of the Canadian Centre of Occupational Health and Safety put the issue of offering incentives for safety this way: it did not argue for safety incentives one way or another. Instead, it offered an opinion on why advocates of each position feel the way they do. Of those who felt safety incentives and awards were important, they noted: It is a good tool to motivate employees and to recognise them with a small gift when they worked a full year without a lost time accident. Incentives were useful in making workers more safety conscious.

For those who felt safety incentives and awards were actually doing a disservice to the industrial safety movement, and not contributing to the benefit of occupational health and safety of workers, they argue: You cannot buy safety. It is better to have people feeling good, knowing they can work in a safe environment than knowing they can qualify for a prize. Any program that encourages workers to stay at work after they have been injured promotes the "walking wounded" situations and under-reporting of injuries, simply to "save the record". It doesn't promote injury reduction or accident prevention. Proper training, effective supervision and good human relations motivate more than awards. While reductions in the number of injured workers may show the benefits of a safety incentive program, any gains in worker health and fewer occupational diseases may not readily be apparent. Difficulties arise in weighing factors related to job risk and departmental work areas, causing indifference. The effects of these programs is to pressure workers to refrain from reporting accidents to management, for fear of "losing the record" or not getting their gift. 11

There have been numerous studies conducted on the factors which constitute effective safety management activities. One of these studies was conducted by A. Cohen and M.J. Smith of the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety, indicating:

People work more safely when they are involved directly in decision making processes. They have to be given a channel to communicate their thoughts to management and receive positive feedback. People work more safely when they have specific and reasonable responsibilities, authority, goals and objectives with respect to identifiable safety performance standards. People are more highly motivated and work more safely when they have immediate feedback about their work.

Cohen and Smith's study indicated that among industry leaders in accident free hours, use of monetary incentives was played down, and management frequently expressed the opinion that safety contests, give-away prizes and once-per-year dinners simply did not work. 12

Yet despite all the study, research and practical examples, there is still a difference of opinion as to safety incentives and their effectiveness. Barrie Simoneau is the Safety Director of the Mines Accident Prevention Association of Manitoba. Simoneau feels that one of the reasons why so may people use safety incentive and recognition programs is because it simply has been traditional to do so. As to why they have been a popular part of traditional safety efforts Simoneau says,

"I think because people didn't, and perhaps still don't understand the relationship between safety, production and quality. This is something I have as a philosophy and I use it fairly often: safety performance must be a measure of success - not an analysis of failure. We tend to measure safety performance in terms of loss - frequency, severity, damage - and we make these beautiful charts and put them in annual reports, and we say look how bad we're doing. Then we try to analyse those failures to see what the problem is. Really, what we need to do is rather than deal with symptoms of problems, we need to say, what is the problem, identify the problem, solve the problem, and you never need to talk about safety."

Jim Williams is a Senior Loss Management Advisor with Syncrude Canada Limited in Fort McMurray, Alberta. One of the reasons why Williams thinks these systems experience problems is due in part to people having some very cynical views about the whole process. Says Williams, "We have some supervisors here from the old school and they balk at this recognition thing. They say the only reason we do these things is to get points on an audit program, but that's not so. They're just from the old school." 14

On to next section	Return to table of contents
HTML by Ralph Stuart	Last revised: April 6, 1997
URL: http://siri.org/library/incprog/tradition1.html