Safety Rewards/Incentives - Boon or Bane?

Many organizations reward and provide incentive to their employees for working safely for certain period without accident or for reporting of near misses, incidents, etc or giving suggestion for enhancing safety at work place.

However, the question is whether such rewards or incentives are helpful on long term basis. As long as genuine reporting system exists and followed, the rewarding system may work. However, it is also likely that accidents may not be reported and hid so that targeted accident-free period can be achieved and rewarded, which will defeat the basic purpose of improving safety at work place.

Sometime back, an expert commented in a safety seminar that rewarding system will not work. The news of various accidents in different countries supports such statements because generally there will not be any accident without warning signals. If action is taken on such signals, then accidents could have been avoided. As nobody cares to report or take action, people and environment are endangered.

It is therefore advisable not to pamper employees with rewards and instead use the resources to communicate the hazards and consequences so that accidents do not occur. Again hazard communication should be specific to the job in which persons are engaged and in this regard, job supervisors play important role.