Lonnie Schock learned long ago that safety can’t be bought. A decade ago, while working as a safety professional on a job in Oregon for Intel, he got a tough lesson in how incentive programs intended to lower incident rates actually can unravel a project’s safety culture. The company used a popular lottery system, seen on many construction sites over the years, in which workers who reported solid safety statistics earned chances to win a new pickup truck; anyone injured on the job was ineligible for the prize. Workers driving to the jobsite saw the truck parked in front of the project’s gates, reminding them of the possible payoff.
At the end of the project, the workers were gathered together and a random name was drawn. The winner chuckled as he gave a brief acceptance speech: “I can’t believe I won this. I broke my foot four months ago and hid it so I would still have a chance to win this. Good thing I did,” Schock recalls him saying.