Amongst the workforce you will always find the best safety solutions

I have recently shared some insights on how to empower our workforce to become part of our safety solutions, presenting this theme at 3 safety conferences in Australia in 2018. Surprisingly, I encounter myself surrounded by safety professionals from both the Traditional and the New View of Safety telling me that the presentation inspired them to try and implement/improve their HSE Rewards and Recognition Program. Personally, I don’t believe that an HSE Rewards and Recognition Program is the ultimate ‘silver bullet’ for safety as it must be managed in parallel with a few other key safety initiatives which I may share some of my opinion publishing other articles in the future.

I share in this article some important concepts that you should consider if you decide to develop your own HSE Rewards and Recognition Program, driving solutions from the bottom up. It is important to highlight that you should not believe that you will find an off-the-shelf program which will suit all organizations, sites, managers and/or workers. Your HSE Rewards and Recognition Program must be customized to your industry, work environment and the current management style.

The results of your HSE Rewards and Recognition Program will potentially become the most powerful lead indicators of your organization, it builds a psychologically safe workplace where everybody feels comfortable to share their ideas if/when they are positively recognized for that. I learned through my own experience that an HSE Rewards and Recognition Program will engage the workforce, creating greater value, increasing productivity, making workers more connected with their work and becoming more committed to the company’s success.

This whole article comes down to a key point, empowering our workforce as workers only own what they have helped to create.

Overall strategy

I have listed below the 6 essential items that I believe should be the base for any HSE Rewards and Recognition Program.

1. Customized Categories: Define what is important for your organization. I suggest the following 3 categories for you to start:

• Recognize workers and leaders who have demonstrated the commitment to safety and contributed to the overall performance of your organization.
• Implemented safety innovations.
• Suggested safety improvements.

2. Communication Strategy: Assign a champion for the program on behalf of the organisation. This person will be responsible for collecting all submissions of completed improvements, facilitating the judging process, purchasing rewards, communicating winners and sending constant communication promoting the program.

3.  Leadership Support: You need to sell the program to the person sitting on the top of your organization. It could be your CEO or GM, it doesn’t matter.

4.  Efficient Judging Criteria: Your judging criteria must be open and transparent. It will have a direct impact on the credibility of your program.

5.  Rewarding Winners: The winners should receive their awards as fast as you can manage it to happen. Taking too long to give their prizes will work against your program.

6.  Recognizing Excellence: Promoting your winners through external and industry awards will boost the HSE culture of your organization.

Simple solutions for complex problems  (click here).

Important considerations

• Workers naturally want to feel important and do great work so it is our responsibility to keep them engaged, providing the proper environment for them to do so.
• Your front-line workers are the subject matter experts as they are dealing with the challenges and are best placed to identify opportunities for improvement and innovation.
• When providing feedback, make sure you are specific, that way the worker will know exactly what they did well so they will keep repeating it or even improve.
• Be sincere and demonstrate gratitude.
• Celebrate success (bold and loud).
• Ensure your change management process is relevant to each level of changes. It should drive the discussion on if something fails, what other controls need to be considered to fail safely.
• Establishing KPIs for your Rewards and Recognition Program will potentially jeopardize the quality of your safety innovations.
• Make sure you publicly acknowledge the workers, departments and/or sites who have contributed the most for your program, consider giving a special prize for their engagement and commitment.
• Some innovations will require investment so the management team should be prepared for supporting new ideas.
• Establish a database where all safety innovations can be cataloged and consulted.
• Rewards do not need to be monetarily, it could be a couple of tickets for a sporting event which will provide the worker an incredible opportunity to spend a special moment with their family and/or friends. It will make your workers proud of your organization.

BY Paulo Gomes
Regional Senior Safety Advisor