| Rewards for working safely |
It
takes imagination to create individual benefits for working safely
that outweigh the advantages of taking safety short-cuts.
A principle of positive reinforcement, is that the action is rewarded
by its consequences, and the rewards need to be tangible, visible,
intrinsic to the task, and as immediate as possible. But the major
reward for working safely—long term health and freedom from
injury—stretches way out into the future, and although the
reward is arguably tangible and visible, it is not so highly visible
as to give immediate positive feedback. It is not naturally "intrinsic
to the task".
In fact, many safety practices have immediately negative consequences,
such as discomfort, inconvenience and reduced pace, that naturally
discourage their occurrence.
Workers are rewarded for productivity, and as this is what their
employer wants and needs, the immediate rewards for productivity
are likely to come at the expense of safety.
What do the accompanying pictures, (figures 1 and 2)
have in common?
The immediate rewards for the fisherman—landing fish—are
intrinsic to the task of fishing (figure 1). His successful fishing—or
productivity— causes him to focus so completely on the task
at hand that he is ignoring safety rules—no life jacket—and
the mounting safety hazard created by his catch. He is on an intermittent
reinforcement schedule. He catches a fish once in a while. This
kind of reward schedule is most powerful in maintaining continuous
behavior.
Another way of understanding this is to look at the compulsion to
gamble (figure 2). Gambling is a behavior maintained by intermittent
rewarding consequences (occasional wins). The financial dangers
it poses, lie in the future.
In each of these cases, safety issues have negative immediate consequences.
The fisherman would have to limit his catch to what he could carry,
or abandon his struggle with the giant fish. The gambler would have
to set a spending limit. The possibility of the fisherman sinking
the boat, or the gambler sinking his life savings, lie in the future,
even if that future is close at hand, and some reckless individuals
would prefer to ignore safety in the excitement of the immediate
rewards intrinsic to the task.
The challenge of making safety "intrinsic to the task"
The callenge of making safety "instinsic
to the task"
The traditional safety response has been to punish at-risk behavior.
This requires aggressive policing. Punishment works if
it is severe, certain and immediate. But in the modern workplace,
our ability to punish is limited. Besides, human nature being what
it is, we tend to try to circumvent punishment. We don’t try
to avoid the behavior being punished, we try to avoid the punishment.
An analogous example is speed-trapping on our highways. Speed traps
are of limited value for reducing speed. Many drivers learn to slow
down only when there is the danger of being caught.
A better solution is to make safety,
or its rewards, intrinsic to the task. Reward workers for working
safely through positive consequences such as intermittent praise
or recognition.
This is helped by making safety issues as easy to incorporate in
the task as possible, such as placing supplies of safety goggles
close at hand, or reducing negative consequences by designing machine
guards in such a way that they make the equipment easier to operate
with the guards in place, rather than the reverse.
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