...because it’s easy and it looks like it has a positive impact,” he says. “Psychologically, the problem with incentives is that the people find the shortest path between where they are now and achieving the incentive. That’s not necessarily the path we want them to take.”

The goal behind a good safety program is to instill a strong safety culture within a company, and Prichard says that too often employees fail to make that connection with incentives. “You can see that as a parent or even a pet owner,” he adds. “Are they doing what you ask because of the reward or because they know it’s the right thing to do?”

The structure of programs can have an effect on motivation. Some programs that focus on recognizing individual behavior often come in the form of small rewards such as $5 gift cards. But if employees believe management is biased, employees can take a negative view of this approach, Prichard warns. “It can breed jealousy,” he says. “[The person] thinks, ‘That guy always gets the gift cards because he’s the boss’s favorite.’ ”

Some companies try to up the ante by pooling their resources together into a lottery-type system, such as a drawing for a grand prize like a truck or a big-screen TV. Prichard warns that these types of programs can be among the least effective because the person with the best safety performance is not guaranteed to win.

Pernicious Pressure

Incentive programs associated with peer pressure can be the most pernicious and often are eyeballed by OSHA. If the incentive is linked to the performance of an entire team, each team member has the potential to negatively influence behavior in order to get the reward. From OSHA’s view, this can lead to underreporting, ranging from a coworker telling someone not to report an injury because it would jeopardize the free Friday pizza to a manager pushing employees to reduce injury reporting because the results are tied to compensation.

Cory Hall, logistics safety manager for Kansas City-based J.E. Dunn Construction, says he is not convinced incentive programs have value. When accidents do occurr, he says, incentives can make the situation worse.

“On a lot of large projects, you have a revolving-door workforce where a guy may only be there one day,” he says. “If that guy comes in and causes an accident, he ruins [the incentive goals] for the ones who went 14 months without an accident. The workers are upset, and that investment didn’t pay off.”

Prichard argues that the success rate of some incentive programs may not be based on the rewards at all. If employees know management is actively tracking injury rates, that awareness alone can be enough motivation.

Rick Raef, a safety consultant with Willis Group Holdings, San Francisco, says he once favored incentive programs, but has since concluded that rewards don’t drive safety.

One of Raef’s clients scrapped its incentive program and instead pushed for more accountability in the form of more management reviews, focusing on near misses and anonymous reporting. As a result, its loss ratio improved, and workers felt freer to be honest about near misses.

Raef sees “construction bosses struggle in their heart” about incentives because they want to recognize good people and reward them, but there is always the risk of unintended consequences. “The unfortunate fact is, they have done more harm than good.”

Bill Ahal, president of Ahal Preconstruction Services, Baldwin, Mo., and chairman of the Associated General Contractors’ National Safety Health Committee, says that while many AGC members have found safety incentive programs can be effective, in some cases they may not be necessary. “Why would we give someone a reward for coming to work everyday and doing what is expected of them?”