The idea – and the complaint – that safety and health departments operate out of organizational “silos” has been around for decades. You can trace it back to the creation of OSHA in 1971. Safety and health then became a compliance policing function in many companies. And many employers were angered at OSHA’s sudden intrusion into their operations. As a result, management put safety and health departments and personnel in a silo separated from mainstream business activity. For some employers angered at OSHA, the further distance between safety and the rest of the operations, the better. And so, in a number of business-case scenarios, began safety’s segregation – a cause of frustration, resentment and insecurity for many safety and health professionals that persists to this day.
Brian Galonek
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Topics: Engagement, OSHA, Blog, Build Customer Loyalty, Drive Sales, Improve Safety, Increase Performance, Motivate Employees, recognition, Rewards Programs, safety
I’m afraid this article misses the point, as so many often do, about recognition/rewards programs.
Topics: Engagement, Blog, employee engagement, Incentive Programs, Incentive's, Recognize and Reward, Rewards Programs
Viewed through my eyes, virtually everything relates in some way, shape, or form to employee engagement (EE). For me, this is further evidence that engagement should not be just an ancillary issue that safety folk consider only occasionally, when they are not focused on other, more normal, safety issues like PPE and training. In many ways EE has become the most important issue to contend with, and its power is only growing.
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Topics: Engagement, Blog, employee engagement
Topics: Employee Motivation, News, Blog, Motivating Employees, recognition, Rewards
The article linked below, Wellness Programs and Overstepping your Boundaries in the Workplace by Jeffrey Phillips does a nice job summarizing in just a few paragraphs the evolving landscape of wellness programs which are being increasingly adopted by US companies and shaped by government regulations.
Topics: Blog, Incentive's, Wellness Programs
Read the latest article by Brian Galonek in the October issue of ISHN magazine.
I define “The Four Pillars of Safety” as engagement, recognition, communications and measurement. This article will focus on employee recognition, which I view as the energy that is created throughout an organization when people are given credit for their accomplishments and shown gratitude for their efforts. (Editor’s Note: To read this author’s article about the first pillar of safety, employee engagement, see “The ‘heavy lifting’ of safety” in ISHN’s June issue, pp.74-75.) Craving praise
When people are surveyed to find out why they left a job, it is interesting that time and time again “lack of recognition” and “compensation” always rank as the top two reasons. Regardless of economic conditions and other factors, these two heavyweights of job turnover rank at the top of the list. Any reason could compete with compensation as the top motivator of job change; however, this is what the data show.
What this tells us is that people have a basic, fundamental need to know that their efforts are not going unnoticed. And that this need is powerful enough to affect how they work (including how safe they work) and to motivate them in either the right or wrong direction. We see it all the time in our own lives, but may not realize that many of the same things that drive our behaviors are at play in our workplace as well.
Those of us who ever tried to lose weight know how motivational it can be when people start to notice your efforts and make comments to you about how you look (recognizing your accomplishments). I based my most successful weight loss effort not on what the bathroom scale displayed but on how many compliments I received from family, friends and co-workers. My goal was to get 10 unsolicited positive comments about my appearance, and I found it to be far more motivating than hoping for a lower number on the scale.
Along those same lines, I still have trophies that I received from playing sports as a child. I still have positive uplifting letters that I received from family members after graduating from high school and college.
And I have kept just about every plaque, certificate, email, etc. that I and my company have received from customers, employees and suppliers that recognizes our strong efforts.
Why? Why does the impact of positive praise last so long?
It is a validation of our efforts, a sign of our success, and it gives meaning to all that we do. In a workplace environment, it is the energy that flows and that pushes workers and companies to new heights.
Like every other business tactic there are better and worse ways to deploy a recognition strategy. For the purposes of motivating safer behavior, consider the following:
TIMELY: This is the most crucial factor because there is a half-life (deterioration over time) for recognition that is powerful, and the more time that goes by between the actions of an employee and the recognition of those actions, the less effective recognition will be. “You did a great job last year on that project…” is far less impactful than “You did a great job yesterday on that project…” While a slow response diminishes effectiveness, missing an opportunity to recognize someone altogether can be downright devastating. How would you feel if you just reached ten years on the job with a perfect safety record and no one noticed?
FACE-TO-FACE: With the exception of long-haul trucking and a few other similar industries, it is relatively easy for managers to get in front of the workers they wish to recognize, and it is a missed opportunity to not do so.
Posting a “nice job” on some sort of physical or digital bulletin board (if not accompanied by a faceto- face meeting as well) is a relatively hollow way of recognizing someone’s efforts.
Dropping a note on someone’s desk, paycheck stuffers, emails and the like are all better than nothing, but not nearly as powerful as in-person recognition, where the recipient can read facial expressions and body language to truly understand the impact of their efforts.
REWARDING: While not all recognition events should be attached to a reward, many, if not most should. Like it or not, human beings are motivated by rewards and adding a “token” to your expression of appreciation oftentimes has a multiplier effect on the power of the moment.
The average American household participates in 18 customer loyalty programs (grocery stores, gas stations, credit cards, airline miles, etc.) and the companies that offer such programs do so because they motivate behavior. To a certain extent that same dynamic is at play with workers, and rewarding at appropriate levels is sure to add more buzz and power to your recognition program.
TANGIBLE: Whenever possible, there should be some tangible delivery vehicle for the recognition, regardless of whether or not there is a reward attached to it.
Football players are applauded for making a good hit and oftentimes rewarded with a sticker that they put on their helmet as a visible/tangible display of their accomplishment.
Being handed a letter from the boss stating that your safety suggestion was the best one submitted and that it will be implemented is far better than simply being told you made a good suggestion. The tangible element of that piece of paper, or that certificate, or that actual award (TV, jacket, fishing pole) adds great emphasis to the recognition event.
PUBLIC: More often than not workers will find a recognition event to be more powerful when it occurs in front of their co-workers. (There are some exceptions to this rule, and managers should be careful to know their workers before committing to a public event.)
Being recognized in front of one’s peers helps legitimize the accomplishment for those receiving the recognition. It allows them to climb higher on the needs pyramid (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) to reach the self-esteem level, which is characterized as a point in a person’s development in which they desire recognition and respect. Reaching this level on Maslow’s chart allows a worker to bask in the glow of their accomplishments without the need for selfpromotion.
GENUINE: Finally, recognition must be authentic. It should not be perceived as a manager simply doing their duty. If the recognition seems hollow to the recipient, then it can have no positive effect at all, and may even have a negative impact in some circumstances.
Managers need to be sincere because even though workers do want to be recognized, they don’t want to be pandered to, and they will not respond well to false praise. This can be the most difficult area for some companies, because it is reflects on the personalities of those in charge of engagement and recognition. Affecting change on those personalities can be a challenging task.
An employee who receives timely, public recognition of their accomplishments while being rewarded with a tangible token of appreciation -- and occasionally with tangible awards -- will crave more of the same, and will act accordingly to earn additional respect and recognition of their efforts. This is why recognition is one of “The Four Pillars of Safety” and why it is so crucial to creating a great safety culture.
Brian Galonek is president of All Star Incentive Marketing and an ASSE member. He is one of only 35 Certified Professionals of Incentive Marketing, and the former president of the Incentive Technology Council. All Star Incentive Marketing is a 40+ year old company, one of the nation’s top suppliers of safety recognition and rewards programs, and a past winner of the IMA ”Circle of Excellence” award for best safety incentive program.
Topics: Employee Recognition, Blog, employee engagement, Incentive Programs
I define the “Four Pillars of Safety” as engagement, recognition, communications and measurement.
How important is engagement?
If you were to ask c-suite executives to identify pillars of safety, they would probably name training, risk management, PPE, monitoring, root cause analysis, culture, etc.
While these all relate to safety, they should largely be considered safety tactics or measurement tools and not the support structures that truly promote a safe workplace. All these things roll up into one or more of the four pillars listed above.
A safety harness, after all, is useless, or even harmful, if not worn properly. And the training necessary for proper usage is of little value if not administered properly. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but training a group of disengaged workers is a bit like herding cats (cats that may be on their phones checking their fantasy baseball team’s stats or thinking about what to have for lunch instead of really absorbing the training).
Safety professionals know all too well how difficult it can be to get the mind share necessary to have the wide variety of safety-related messages heard and even more difficult to get their workers to internalize them. They have come to realize, even if their bosses have not, that the best tools, tactics and data will not move the safety needle if they don’t have engaged workers.
Engagement is defined as “an emotional involvement or commitment,” and it is a fundamental need of any organization. It is the connection point between employees and the people they interact with in their daily work. Next time your boss wants to know what you plan to do to improve your incident rate, you will do well to point in its direction.
A lack of commitment
There is a growing field of research that looks at employee engagement and related performance issues both in the academic and business worlds, and the data is mounting. According to a study conducted by Human Capital Institute, only 11 percent of today’s workforce demonstrates a very strong commitment to their organization. In a webinar that I delivered last year for ISHN entitled “Safety Soup,” I asked the attendees what they thought the percentage was in their organizations, and the most popular answer was 50-74 percent. The nexus between perception and reality is all telling on this issue.
One of the main reasons for this lack of commitment in my opinion is the poor connection not just between any given employee and their immediate supervisor but between an employee and the myriad of other people in the organization that they interact with (or that they could interact with under different circumstances).
Creating a more engaging environment, i.e. making or improving the connections, is a necessary first step in improving organizational safety.
Two of the other safety pillars — recognition and communications — contribute heavily to successful employee engagement, but much like training they are not engagement itself. A robust employee communications plan will again fall on deaf ears and recognition will seem hollow if proper connections have not been established. This is the “heavy lifting” with the big pay-off for those who take the time to truly consider how to accomplish the goal of creating a more engaging atmosphere in the workplace.
Safety managers take the lead
Safety managers may wonder why this responsibility falls on them. Engagement is the responsibility of the managers and the people with the most direct contact to the employees. For a safety sensitive workforce, this is often the safety manager.
Once a safety manager comes to grips with this need, they should ask themselves, “What can I do to get everyone in my sphere of influence to connect better?” Write down every idea that pops into your head no matter how outrageous or unattainable it may seem and don’t dismiss any idea in the early stages. Ask other key managers and employees to do the same; white board every idea articulated and then consider each one individually in a group discussion. There is no way for me to predict what you might come up with because each environment is so different. However, below is a list of some things I have heard from other companies that may help you visualize the results you can expect:
One thing that can be counted on no matter what the suggestions: the more face-to-face meaningful interactions that take place, the better engaged your workforce will become. Whether you resolve to switch to in-person training (instead of electronic) or to create a bowling league, person-to-person interactions are a fundamental piece of the puzzle — especially as the world grows increasingly more distracted.
http://www.ishn.com/articles/96091-face-to-face-connections-lead-to-employee-engagement
Topics: Blog, employee engagement, recognition, safety, Safety Incentives
How disengaged workers both increase costs and reduce revenue
By Brian Galonek
Topics: Engagement, Blog, customer loyalty, employee engagement, Incentive Programs
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Topics: Blog