Page 70 - Occupational Health & Safety, June 2019

Employee Gifts & Incentives
the business leader, the more likely they are to believe that the employee/em- ployer relationship is a partnership and as such should be mutually beneficial beyond the basic notion of working for pay. Younger workers are more receptive to health and safety recognition/rewards programs and more likely to believe that, given the large percentage of our lives we spend working, we should be able to pursue a healthier lifestyle both at work and on our own time.
In the end, this is the ultimate win- win-win scenario in which a safer and healthier workforce will benefit not just the workers, but also their employers and shareholders alike.
Making Better Connections
There is an old expression that “employ- ees don’t leave companies, they leave managers.” As much as anything, that expression relates to how well manag- ers and employees connect. The most obvious issue on which managers and employees connect centers on job per- formance. Unfortunately, it is far more likely that those interactions will occur when an employee has done something wrong in the eyes of the manager, as opposed to something right. It is much easier to point out mistakes than it is to deliver positive recognition and feed- back. This fact is undoubtedly the reason why “lack of recognition” is one of the top issues cited by former employees as to why they quit their job.
Enter now a well-structured safety, health, and wellness program, one that makes it easy for managers to recognize and reward workers for going “above & beyond” to work safer and lead a health- ier lifestyle. By creating such a program, employers will have created a natural way to enable their managers to better con- nect with employees and to do so in a way that is mutually beneficial. A properly executed program will provide social re- inforcement (the “pat on the back”), build camaraderie around workplace health and safety issues, and will deliver timely positive recognition, which is the most important aspect of engaging employees.
Having a highly engaged workforce should be the goal of safety, HR, opera- tions, sales and every other department in a company. Engaged employees are simply far more likely to work harder, smarter, and safer, to the great benefit of both them and their employer.
Keys to Success
Perhaps the most incredible thing about these programs is that they are inexpen- sive and yet deliver an outstanding return on investment if built properly. As a good starting point, companies should consider putting 0.5% of employee compensation into a well-structured employee “total re- wards” platform. Such a program should be custom branded for maximum success and should provide different departments the ability to easily use the platform to deliver timely employee recognition and rewards built around not just health and safety, but other initiatives, such as peer- to-peer recognition, employee develop- ment programs, training reinforcement, service awards, and more. Offer your employees a 0.5% raise to accomplish all these things and you will literally see no behavior change whatsoever. Put that 0.5% into building a sustainable program and rewarding performance within that program, and you will move the needle measurably every time.
So where will the 0.5% come from? While it is a small percentage, it can still add up to big dollars in larger companies. Given how budgets work, the money is not likely to be just lying around some place waiting to be deployed. A good place to start is by taking inventory of all the disjointed programs that your company may be utilizing now to see where current resources are being deployed inefficiently and repurpose those dollars. The beauty is that, with multiple overlapping goals, it becomes much easier for departments such as HR, safety, operations, sales, and more to create a sustainable budget and generate a multiplying effect in the pro- cess. Another place to look for funding is from your insurance providers (or, if self- insured, from your own savings). As the number of safety incidents decreases and
the health of your workforce increases, you will be able to negotiate better rates with your insurance providers.
These programs have multiple keys to success, and it is crucial to get them right or the program will fail to deliver the ex- pected results. The six most important keys are:
■ Branding and Communicating. People respond to brand names. A com- pany’s program should be custom brand- ed and communicated often through multiple channels.
■ Build and Sustain Participation. Have multiple registration events, intro- duce the program immediately to new hires, and add new safety- and wellness-re- lated challenges to keep it from stagnating.
■ Individual and Group Recognition. On the safety side, primarily reward the individual for specific accomplishments while communicating group goals. On the wellness side, be sure to recognize and reward often with small “nudges” targeting both individual and group ac- complishments.
■ Tangible Awards. To be effective, the awards must be memorable, so of- fer only tangible brand name awards and experiential travel. Do not use cash or cash-like substitutes that do not elicit an emotional response and are too easily forgotten. Also, be sure to offer a broad selection of awards.
■ Measure Everything. Diligent mea- surement is necessary for continual im- provement. Measure not just the obvious things, such as reductions in accidents and lost work time, but the less obvious things, such as turnover, net promoter scores (NPS), and employee engagement levels.
■ Leadership Involvement. Enthusi- astic participation by managers is a key way to get the greatest participation by all. Leaders need to lead, and these programs are a great way to do it!
Brian Galonek, CPIM, is a frequent author and presenter, President of All Star Incen- tive Marketing, and a member of Incen- tive Engagement and Solution Providers (IESP), a Strategic Industry Group within the Incentive Marketing Association.
66 Occupational Health & Safety | JUNE 2019
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