Incentive - December 2007 - (Page 34)

PLAY IT SAFE others. Consider the following case study from a manufacturing plant: “The principle of rewarding safer behavior can be applied to all kinds of workplaces. Several years ago I worked with a very small manufacturing company with a very small budget for its safety incentive program,” recalls Gorman. “The company owner was working with a relatively old workforce, and it was an industrial environment where people were operating relatively dangerous machinery. The owner’s problem was that he had been fined by OSHA because his people weren’t wearonly three employees that were completely in compliance with the safety protocol,” Gorman recalls. “Without saying a word he handed those three employees cameras, and ignored everyone else. A few weeks later he did the same thing. He walked through the factory again, and he found that about ten employees were wearing their safety equipment. He gave each of them a pair of binoculars.” The boss repeated these factory walkthroughs with spot incentive rewards four times over a six-week period, and by the end Timmerman is quite familiar with dangerous occupational settings. Before his work with the incentive house Perks.com, he worked in the mines himself, as an Environmental Chemist employed by Texasgulf Chemicals at its Phosphate Mining Operations in Aurora, N.C. From 1980 to 1983, he worked to promote safety at the mine, supervising a team that monitored environmental quality compliance for air and water as well as waste management. “The work environment certainly had the potential for being quite dangerous,” he recalls. “My team and I climbed 200foot vent stacks to collect air samples and navigated around mining equipment the size of office buildings.” Now, with Perks.com, Timmerman consults with client companies in a variety of industries on safety incentive programs. “We work with companies involved in chemical production and petrochemical production as well as manufacturing and service companies,” he says. The common denominator is that all the companies are using incentives to motivate positive employee behavior. Across different industries, and from small companies to massive corporations, incentive programs that reward safer behavior are effective tools for creating healthier workplaces, Timmerman explains. “I don’t think there’s any silver bullet that does it all,” but recognition, incentives and rewards can be used to promote safety in a variety of industries, he says. “Whether it’s a large organization or a small one, the fundamentals are identical.” Taking a proactive, preventative approach to hazards on the job is an effective strategy in almost any setting. And rewarding safe workplace performance with positive reinforcement can yield good results no matter how big or small the company. When it comes to creating an effective safety incentive program, “You don’t need to reinvent the wheel,” says Timmerman. “Figure out what works well, and capitalize on it.” “In this case a simple approach to a simple compliance problem yielded results.” –Denny Gorman, Gorman Consulting of the program, he’d achieved a 90 percent compliance rate to his safety mandate. The program was a success for the company owner. “It allowed him to give instant feedback to employees that were doing things right, and he simply ignored the ones that were doing it wrong,” says Gorman. “It was a very simple program.” Simple, but effective. “Sometimes we in the promotional products industry overcomplicate what we do. In this case a simple approach to a simple compliance problem yielded results,” Gorman states. “That’s what promotional products do best: Change behavior.” ing their safety equipment.” Though employees had been provided with safety gear like gloves, goggles and earplugs, and had been instructed to use them, compliance was low. To improve compliance Gorman and the company owner created a spot incentive program called “Focus on Safety.” First, the company’s 60 employees were exposed to posters and collateral material bearing the slogan. “And then,” says Gorman, “the crux of the program was that the company owner bought binoculars, magnifying glasses, cameras with manual-focus zoom lenses; anything that we could find that had a focus tie-in.” The company owner chose four different dates, “and on each of those random dates he simply walked though the factory and made notes of who was wearing the proper safety gear. And on the first date he had LESSONS FROM THE MINES Six missing mine workers in Utah, and the grueling, deadly month-long search by federal mining authorities that followed, brought attention to the dangers of mining operations. But safety lessons learned in workplaces like mines can be applied to all sorts of occupational environments. “A highprofile accident raises awareness,” says Steve Timmerman, vice president of business development for Los Angeles–based Perks.com, “but workplace safety is a business imperative in every industry.” 34 | Incentive | December 2007 | incentivemag.com http://incentivemag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Incentive - December 2007

Incentive - December 2007 Contents Editor’s Note: Revved Up In the News Cover Story: Rolls-Royce Empowers Its Own Case Study: Booz Allen Hamilton Beating Your Best Incentive Primer: Add Value to Your Event Keeping Safety In Mind Incentive Interview Potentials Here and Now Research: Corporate Gifts Facts Report Tabletop Awards: Travel Gift Cards Travel News Viva Puerto Vallarta Indigenous Spas Advertiser Index Off the Cuff: Ambassador Christoph Bubb Luxury Brands Special Supplement

Incentive - December 2007

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