Every company wants to guarantee the safety of its employees. Obviously, the employees benefit from remaining healthy and unhurt, but the company also benefits as productivity increases and costs decrease. Your company can provide all the safety training in the world, and still there is a disconnect between the company's safety goals and the behaviors and attitudes of the employees. While this can be extremely frustrating, there are few tips that can help your company motivate the employees to remain safety conscious.
An incentive program increases employee motivation. However, the incentives should be based on positive behaviors and not the lack of accidents. Focussing on a lack of accidents actually encourages the employees not to report any accidents. This is not the purpose of an incentive program. Rather, reward behavior that decreases the likelihood of an accident occurring.
Safety Training - Involve the Employees
Include your employees in the process of improving company safety. Any safety training program will ultimately fail unless it has meaning for the employees and connects to what they actually do on the job. The employees will not accept a safety program only based on theory.
Ways to involve the employees include having them:
- Participate in the purchase of personal protection equipment,
- Participate in problem-solving committees,
- Make safety suggestions,
- Conduct safety evaluations.
As employees become more involved in the various aspects of safety training and understand how it affects not only themselves but also others in the company, they become willing to take safety issues more seriously.
Safety Training - Part of the Company Culture
To improve safety motivation, it must be an integral part of the company culture. It must be emphasized with every employee from day one, the day of his or interview. A system of reminders and follow-through must be in place to reinforce ideas, concepts and the need to remain safety conscious.
Leadership at all levels must provide motivation and support. They need to set a positive example for everyone else. Their actions need to demonstrate safety awareness at all times. Leadership must remain committed to providing feedback, whether it is positive or negative. Ignoring any incidents only encourages future unsafe behavior. Company leaders need to enforce the idea that safety is more important than profit.
For safety training programs to work employees and management alike must be motivated and committed to the program. This commitment needs to be visible from the CEO to the workers on the floor. No one is exempt. Employees need to see leaders acting as role models, and leaders need to provide tangible support for their employees.
Another way to improve safety motivation is to bring in a motivational speaker. Motivational speakers, such as Brad Hurtig, possess the unique ability to motivate groups of individuals to a common cause. During his high school years, Brad lost both hands in a workplace accident. Consequently, he has a unique perspective on the importance of company safety and is able to pass the message on to management and employees alike. Contact us today to have Brad speak at your place of business!