Posted By Adam Jackson
I also have to disagree with the first few posts as done correctly, incentive schemes can be a great way to get safety to the forefront of everyone's minds, (not the only way, but a very useful tool as part of a wider package).
In the last company I worked in were having around 72 LTAs (measured as one lost day or more rather than the RIDDOR standard) which was terrible, even for agriculture. We put in a whole raft of safety improvement measures but still got those idiotic niggling little cases where a splinter in a finger was giving three days off work (that's a genuine example, and there was no secondary infection involved). People were using safety as a means for time off.
We put everyone into groups of usually 6 to 10 people, loosely based around their normal working locations / jobs, (to give a handle on scope - total employee population, around 1,800 to 2,000). Each person then received a £200 bonus in their Christmas pay packet if their group went the year LTA-free. The bonus was accrued quarterly, (but paid annually) but if one member of the group had an LTA, all members of that group lost their bonus for that quarter.
(The only difference was office workers who had the chance at a £100 bonus as, while offices are not risk free, they're a damn sight safer than working with the animals or machinery on farms. And without wishing to confuse the issue, I did this in all our operating countries with the bonus being equivalent to £200 in their local currency).
Reasoning for setting it up this way:
1) To get people away from their firm mind-set that they were not responsible for their own safety and some mythical being called "the management" was. While managers and the company do have a responsibility, the employees do as well and acceptance of this was what was missing.
2) To use peer-pressure - if someone has a very minor accident and took time off, it was not only them that suffered.
3) To get them to take on some responsibility for their own workplaces instead of just leaving it to others.
3) The bonus was paid quarterly so that one LTA in February did not mean they lost their bonus for the whole year - there was still something decent left to aim for.
There are some exemptions written into the system, most notably that if someone was injured as a result of something of which the company was aware but to date had taken no action (for financial or whatever reasons) then they did not lost their bonus. As a side issue it was amazing how near-miss and general hazard reporting shot up due to this clause - another benefit to us.
To back it up we developed an excelent return-to-work system so if someone was injured or ill then, subject to medial approval, we could find work for them. Nobody was forced to accept it but peer pressure really did work in making sure that nobody took time off for a splinter. And where injuries were more serious in all the years of running this scheme we have not had one person complain of victimisation by their colleagues if they have been injured seriously enough to warrant time off.
The unions agreed and fully supported it. As it was based on lost time its hard for people to hide an accident - if they're not in work we know about it even if its not reported unlike first aid or other non-lost time injuries.
The result we saw was not as was posted earlier that accidents were being hidden and under-reported, but as I have said, reporting shot up, employees demanded improvements and changes which was great, oh, and in four years our 1-day or more LTAs went from 72 a year to 9.