SAFETY

Incentivizing Safety: Is it a Good Move?

Within my time in the maritime industry, I’ve worked in oil and gas as well as (currently) a major cruise line. Although oil tankers and passenger vessels are about as different as can be in terms of operations, safety remains paramount.

When looking at safety culture in particular, one practice seems fairly consistent across the maritime industry: calculate bonuses for senior officers in part based on reportable/lost time incidents. The intention behind this is no doubt good, but studies and anecdotal evidence show that the outcome is the opposite of the desired effect. Also, there are monetary safety incentives and/or prizes available for most other crewmembers. But does that come with the same potentially negative consequences? Let’s break it down.

It is noteworthy to mention that workplaces with a strong safety culture and climate report more productivity, lower turnover and higher levels of employee satisfaction. Plus, businesses suggest it makes a notable difference in cost savings, too.

An argument can be made that there should be enough intrinsic motivation to carry out jobs correctly and safely; that a great employee doesn’t need to be incentivized and when it comes to safety, returning home at the end of your shift just as healthy as you arrived is a strong enough motivator. Unfortunately, human nature tends to sabotage this practice. We are evolutionarily designed to seek the greatest reward with the smallest amount of energy expenditure. Basically, we tend to be lazy. Plus, when completing a task that we’re familiar with, we have the tendency to mentally check out (enter complacency). Finally, there is the common mentality of “it won’t happen to me.” All of these factors and more show us it is rare (if not impossible) to find a worker who is completing their tasks in totality 100% of the time.

So where does this leave us? With two main types of safety incentive programs: rate-based programs and behavior-based programs. Rate-based programs utilize statistics, including lost time incidents,

to quantify rewards then distributed to employees. Unfortunately, it is shown that this pervasively discourages reporting, as employees fear backlash and a potential lack of bonuses too much to risk reporting safety issues. At one point, this was such a problem that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) released a statement protecting workers who report safety issues and stating it was discriminatory to put programs into place that discouraged reporting.

The other type of incentive program is behavior based. For example, rewarding crewmembers who proactively report a

Workplaces with strong safety culture report more productivity, lower turnover and higher levels of employee satisfaction.

Perhaps a way to move forward will be to remove ratebased safety bonuses altogether ...

near miss with lessons learned or recognizing those who fill out a permit to completion and include a strong job safety analysis. This can result in some monetary rewards as well, but it encourages present practices instead of issuing punishment for those in the past. Behavior-based safety incentive programs are popular for this reason. So why do we still tie so many senior leader and executive bonuses to rate measured safety?

Surprisingly, even as adults, most of us still revel under positive recognition from our peers and superiors, showing that an easy (and cost effective) way to elevate safe working practices is by recognizing them often, specifically and preferably in public. It takes it a step further than “thanks all for completing the in-port transit safely today,” and turns it into “thank you, Jack, for keeping a sharp eye on the tacking sailboat and vocalizing the CPA to the rest of the team, and thank you, Jill, for catching the helmsman going port 5 instead of starboard 5.”

Yes, these tasks fall clearly into Jack and Jill’s job descriptions in this example, but it takes very little time and zero extra dollars to recognize them in front of the rest of the bridge team for a job well done and it pays off in spades with how incentivized most employees will be after this type of specific affirmation.

Perhaps a way to move forward will be to remove rate-based safety bonuses altogether and instead utilize a myriad of different quantifiables for the myriad of different people that work within our industry. If safety is the end goal, I argue that we should look towards the data that tells us high employee satisfaction rates is one of the best indicators of a strong safety culture. In short, employees who feel appreciated by their superiors and content at their company are more motivated to perform to their best ability. What if the maritime industry utilized a combination of employee satisfaction surveys, strong self-reporting culture (i.e. voluntarily entering near misses), proactive improvements of job safety analysis, and average longevity of employees’ tenure to determine annual bonuses? It may be a lofty dream, but it’s worth the discussion.

ANSLEY ODELL Marine Safety Investigator Royal Caribbean Group

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