Safety Engagement: 3 Tips For Keeping Employees Engaged in Workplace Safety

Strategies for Boosting Workplace Safety Engagement: 

• Rewards Programs
• Financial Incentives
• Competitions 

Rewards Programs  

Rewards programs are a great way to motivate employees to adopt and maintain safer behaviors. They help make workplace safety positive for employees, which is a huge part of a good safety culture. It’s always helpful for employees to think more about the “carrots” of workplace safety (positive incentives) than the “sticks” (penalties for violations). Here are a few ideas for those delicious safety carrots: 

• Gift Cards: Who doesn’t love a gift card? Recognizing employees and supervisors with the best safety records by awarding gift cards is a great way to incentivize short term safety excellence. Keep monthly or weekly statistics of either long term or short term safety goals and reward people within the company who contribute to hitting those goals. This is a fun and inexpensive way to encourage focus on different safety initiatives. One of our partners, Lakeside Books, implemented a program where employees who reported management engaging in unsafe behaviors received a $25 gift card. This not only incentivized vigilance but also encouraged a culture of mutual accountability. 
• Parties and Meals: There’s a reason that pizza parties are beloved ages 4-100. They’re great! Be it a pizza party, happy hour, group lunch out, or any other kind of celebration, parties and meals are a great way to reward teams. Celebrate shifts or departments with the most improved safety records by organizing these fun events. This not only rewards safe behavior but also encourages team spirit. It’s also a great opportunity to be open and creative. What do your teams enjoy? Reward them with it! 
• Reward Risk Reduction in KPIs: Keeping detailed statistics on risk reductions (something Voxel excels at) is a great way to know when supervisors are contributing to a positive safety culture. Make risk reduction one of your supervisors’ KPI (key performance indicators). One of our partners has told us that they review Voxel’s dashboard and make safety statistics part of the monthly review for supervisors. Again, this can be more carrot than stick! You can reward supervisors who have the best monthly improvements. 

Financial-Based Incentives 

Of course, your company is a business. Making the financial side of anything work is crucially important from the management side. Being rewarded for efforts is equally important from the employee side. Luckily, investing in safety engagement makes sense as a business decision, in addition to being the right thing to do. 

Remember the studies that said engaged employees are five times less likely to have a workplace accident and seven times less likely to miss time? The same studies also say that “the average cost of a safety incident was six times lower for engaged employees compared to non-engaged ones.” More engaged employees mean a potential massive cost savings for ownership. 

Use some of that savings to implement programs that offer higher pay rates to employees with minimal or no severe safety violations. Aside from the obvious financial incentive, this also sends an important message to your employees about safety culture. Of course, these programs neither penalize employees for being injured nor incentivize employees to stay quiet about reporting injuries. Instead, they reward employees for keeping safety a priority throughout their workday. You are rewarding not just their output, but how they deliver the output. 

Competitions 

Creating a sense of friendly competition can drive employees to engage more actively in safety practices. Here are a couple of fun ways to gamify safety: 

• Shift Competitions: In each shift meeting, supervisors can share the latest Voxel leading indicator risk data with the team. For instance, shifts can compete to have the lowest number of “no stops at the end of aisles” by the end of the week. The winning shift could be rewarded with donuts or snacks. One of our partners, a major crafts retailer, did just this. They successfully reduced unsafe behaviors among PIT operators by implementing shift-versus-shift competitions, driving significant improvements quickly. 
• Safety Challenges: Organize challenges where teams or departments strive to achieve specific safety goals. This is another great chance to be creative and foster a sense of friendly competition. A couple examples: 
  • Monthly Safety Bingo: Create bingo cards with various safety tasks or achievements. Employees mark off tasks as they complete them, and the first to complete a row or the entire card wins a prize.
  • Hazard Hunt: Organize a competition where employees identify potential hazards in the workplace. Points are awarded for each hazard found, and those with the most points win a reward. If you use Voxel, you can use our site intelligence platform to pick out hazards that are leading indicators of possible incidents. Let’s say Voxel has shown you that there is a high frequency of blocked aisles and exits at your warehouse. If employees are motivated to hunt for blocked aisles and exits, you can bet those numbers are going to go down fast. 

Conclusion 

Boosting employee engagement in workplace safety requires a combination of incentives, and leadership commitment. By encouraging participation, recognizing safe behaviors, and fostering a supportive environment, companies can create a safer and more engaged workforce. During Safety Engagement Month (and always!), let’s make safety a shared priority. We can all work together to build a workplace where everyone feels valued and protected. Remember, a safer workplace is a happier, more prosperous workplace. 

How Voxel Can Help 

Voxel’s site intelligence platform connects directly to your existing security cameras and then uses computer vision and AI to give you more visibility and insight into the safety of every site, every day. You’ll have the data you need to take impactful, preventative action that keeps employees safe and strengthens your safety culture.