Vicki was sitting next to me at a safety leadership convention. She was a manager for an engineering and construction company. I asked her if her company was doing anything innovative with their safety program. “Yes, she said. I love this one thing we’re doing and I also hate it. ”
“How come?” I asked.
“Well, it’s something our section is doing that is voluntary. My department has really gotten into it and it’s one of those things that you know is good for everybody but it also can be a bit challenging.” Vicki explained. Now I was intrigued and began asking all kinds of questions.
Vicki told me how they had divided her department into teams. There were four members on each team. The team members could get points in a variety of ways. Some were easy. For example, you could get points simply by replacing the batteries in your fire detectors at home. Other tasks took more effort.
It was an honor system and Vicki said she was confident that most everyone, if not everyone was being honest about the points they accumulated. Folded cards were made up that had categories and point values so you could easily keep score.
All the categories were either off-the-job related or about improving your health. After six months you turned in your card and tallied up the points and the team with the most points in a category got a prize and the team with the most overall points got a grand prize. (I don’t remember what the prizes were.)
It sounded like a wonderful program. So what did Vicki hate about it? Her twin daughters loved getting points—especially the “exercising with your children or other family member tasks.” Vicki told me that her girls asked her nearly every day to exercise with them so they could get more points for the team.
One day they asked her if she would do sit ups with them for 20 minutes. “No way!” she said. Instead, she agreed to a few sit ups and then they went outside and played catch with a beach ball for the rest of the time. “Twenty minutes of sit ups would kill me!” she told me with wide eyes. I laughed but thought, wow, how cool is that?!! To have positively affected a family to that degree with a safety program contest is wonderful. It’s a lesson for all of us safety leaders.
If you’ve done anything innovative that has affected your employees and their families’ safety & health, I’d love to hear about it.
‘till next time,
Richard
