Everyone knows building strong teams is critical for a strong safety culture. But how can you do that when most of your crew are short-term workers? Here’s how one construction client used safety incentives to turn strangers into teammates and drop their TRIR from 5.5 to 1.
Background
This company was made of small crews who traveled the United States for work projects. A typical project lasted 9-12 weeks and required 30-40 workers. But only 10-12 of those workers were regular employees of the company. The rest were local, temporary hires.
This created a challenge for their company and it's an issue familiar to many construction outfits. Temporary workers are necessary and valuable team members, but they also present a laundry list of unknowns. With each new hire, you wonder: what's their attitude toward safety? What experience do they have working in compliance with OSHA regulations? How do you generate discretionary effort and motivate compliance with team members who aren't invested in the company long-term? In addition, many of their temporary hires only spoke Spanish. This presented a language barrier that made communicating about safety more difficult.
The company had also hit a plateau in its safety progress. Its TRIR was 5.5 and its EMOD was just under 1— both about average for their industry, but nobody competes on an average score. When they became our client, they wanted to develop a strategy for quickly immersing employees in their safety culture, decreasing accidents, and addressing the language barrier. This would require educating employees on accident prevention, motivating them to comply, and generating accountability for their safety and the safety of others.
Challenges and Goals
Whatever solution they implemented would need to have a few critical features. Number one, onboarding would have to be short and sweet— their projects were fast-paced, and they didn’t have months to engage temporary employees. Second, it would have to be engaging so that managers and employees, temporary or not, would commit to it. And lastly, they needed it to work. Underreporting had been a persistent issue, but now their TRIR was 5.5 and their insurance bill was rising. It was time to turn things around before it was too late.
Working with AOE Rewards
In planning meetings with their executives and safety personnel, we devised a strategy with AOE Rewards to get them to their targets. The content of their AOE Rewards system would increase critical behaviors that were lacking like stop-the-job authority and near-miss reporting as well as routine behaviors, such as wearing PPE and JSAs. Employees would receive positive recognition and points when observed performing critical safe behaviors. We also hired a native Spanish speaker to translate discussion modules and recognition prompts.
Driving cultural shifts starts at the top. At the launch of their pilot program, we requested that regional vice presidents be present at training sessions with superintendents to express their confidence in AOE Rewards and the priority of their safety in the company. Our team hit the ground with their supervisors and team leads to show them how to use this safety incentive program. After only two training sessions, supervisors were ready to enroll their teams and start using AOE Rewards.
Results
Within the first month, our clients reported an increase in near-miss reporting. As near-miss reports increased, areas for improvement surfaced and were addressed. Employees missed fewer days and voluntarily engaged in safe behaviors. After a year of consistent engagement from their managers, their TRIR dropped 33%. Over the next two years, their TRIR went from 5.5 before AOE Rewards to 1. Those changes generated an 80% reduction in accident costs, reducing their annual spending from $400,000 before AOE Rewards to $60,000.
The shift wasn’t just happening on OSHA records. When regional vice presidents asked their supervisors about AOE Rewards on-site, they recognized a positive shift in employees’ attitudes toward their company and safety. Across locations, the consensus was that safety incentives were the key to breaking through their plateau and reducing injuries. Safety incentives had created unity around a common goal that surpassed the term of their employment. Previously disjoint crews now worked to keep each other safe and reward one another for their effort. As one regional vice president said, "Our leaders have never been more involved in a process that, at the end of the day, has one simple purpose: to send every one of our employees home to their loved ones healthy and safe."
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