There are many ways to build a workplace loss prevention and safety incentive program.
Among the many methods, incentivization is the best and most effective method for lasting change—incentivizing employees motivates them and improves their morale to enhance workplace safety.
This article shares a step-by-step plan you can use to help your clients build a loss prevention and safety incentive program.
What is a Loss Prevention and Safety Incentive Program?
A workplace loss prevention and safety program promotes a safe, healthful work environment and conditions for all employees based on clearly defined, performance-oriented objectives.
The goal of a great workplace loss prevention and safety incentive program is to get all employees to repeat safe and productive behaviors to decrease workers' comp, accidents, and injuries.
A safety and loss prevention incentive program aims to promote wellness, increase safety, decrease on-the-job injuries, and implement loss control so that employees to be alert to and repeat healthy, safe, and productive behaviors.
This will generally decrease a company’s workers' comp premiums.
Step-by-Step Plan to Building a Loss Prevention and Safety Incentive Program
1. Set Annual Loss Prevention Goals
The overall goal is loss prevention and employee safety.
This goal should be clear with annual measurable and realistic loss and safety prevention indicators.
Your goals may include different aspects such as proper equipment training of all employees, reduction in eye injuries, and proper, consistent scaffolding erection.
The goals should also be divided into teams and individuals to let everyone know how they’re expected to help prevent losses and how they can collaborate to promote safety.
2. Identify Team To Build Safety Incentive Program
Have a comprehensive team to build the safety incentive program composed of workers’ representatives, senior staff, junior staff, department reps or heads, management, and safety personnel.
Such a team will obtain comprehensive coverage of all areas and concerns of all staff to generate an effective and successful program.
3. Review OSHA’s Stance on Safety Incentive Programs
OSHA requires many employers and sites to have a written workplace safety program and a written accident and injury reduction (AWAIR) program or a loss prevention program.
But this requirement can vary per state and industry.
Review your industry, state, and find out what OSHA requires you to have, and then ensure the requirement is included in the program.
During the review, also try to find out the federal government’s required OSHA written programs such as a Hazard Communications program, a Lockout/Tagout program, or Respiratory Protection program.
4. Develop A Process To Earn Incentives
How will employees earn incentives, or what will they need to do to earn incentives?
A process to earn incentives will give employees an easy-to-follow procedure for earning incentives such as points, milestones, or numbered days or weeks, each loss prevented, safety measures undertaken, and more.
For example, each employee may need to have safety prevention training, which can be rewarded with points or anything else the safety prevention program team can identify.
Also, all employees may need to obtain training and become familiar with safety rules by which they’re required to abide.
Failure to comply with safety rules may also result penalties and disciplinary procedures such as a warning letter, show cause, a verbal warning, and more.
5. Identify and Outline Specific Employee Incentives
Your program should identify and outline specific incentives that employees will earn.
These should be visible and tangible rewards that support employees’ wellness and job motivation.
You can first connect with professional award distributors to help identify these awards so that employees get awards they'll want.
Make the incentives genuine, rewarding, meaningful, and worth achieving.
In addition, it’s important to award employees regularly, such as monthly or quarterly, so that more employees get opportunities for rewards.
6. Educate Employees About The Safety Incentive Plan
Provide adequate training regarding the safety incentive plan, and make employees understand what they are expected to do, how they can collaborate, and their responsibilities.
Training employees while maintaining a safety incentive plan results in greater employee responsibility.
Without training, the program may run out of steam.
You can also make the plan part of your new employee orientation, explaining the safety procedures and rewards to them.
Your employee training should:
- Teach safety skills,
- Increase awareness of workplace hazards and prevention methods,
- Help employees understand workplace rules and standards, and
- Support employee collaboration.
7. Distribute Written Plan to Employees
Once you have the plan, you need to ensure that all employees—veterans and newcomers—have it.
You can distribute a copy of the plan to employees during training and they can go through it together with the trainer.
After that, you can email the plan to each employee to have a copy and go through it anytime.
It’s also essential to communicate the plan regularly, for example, through a company-wide email or notice, to remind everyone—employees and management— of the importance of safety and loss prevention.
8. Measure The Plan’s Effectiveness
Having a plan is different from having an effective plan.
How does the plan support workplace safety?
You need to have key performance indicators that will measure the plan’s effectiveness over a period of time.
Examples of KPIs for an incentive program can be:
- Loss reduction and by how much
- Reduction in claims of worker’s compensation
- Improved employee morale to work
- Greater job performance
- Reduced absenteeism
Type of Employee Incentives
The key types of incentives are rewards that excite employees. These can include:
- Monetary and cash incentives. This includes employee discretionary bonuses, year-end bonuses, cash gifts, salary increases, spot awards, profit sharing, and more.
- Gifts in the form of art, cash, prizes, electronics, gift cards, ride-share credit, paid health insurance, and paid vacation days, among others.
- Experiences such as perks, like tickets to festivals, concerts, and sporting events.
- Recognition experiences like best employee of the month or year, best team player, and more.
- Points for employees to redeem for rewards of their choosing, such as gifts, experiences, and merchandise.
- Professional development such as increased training on additional courses or industry certifications, job promotions, mentorship, and corporate events.
- Health and wellness programs such as gym memberships, additional time off, choice of projects, and more.
Conclusion
A successful loss prevention and safety incentive program not only rewards employees but helps them buy in and cultivate their support.
Also, an incentive program is only one part of the organization’s overall safety and wellness program.
The end goal of the safety incentive program is to reduce injuries, accidents, and ill-health behaviors and get the entire organization on board with safety and loss prevention.
Interested in learning more about implementing this type of program? Contact AIA!
