Incentivising health and safety on the ground

Steven McNicholas explains the health and safety incentive scheme in operation at leading UK construction firm McNicholas.

Why should you have to incentivise occupational health and safety schemes? Surely people will want to participate, purely because they are protecting themselves and all others affected by their work? Human nature, however, seems to dictate that we need a stimulus to make us act responsibly, be it a punitive fine for not wearing a car seat belt, or an award for achieving a safety milestone for example.

McNicholas, as with most companies, have disciplinary measures for those breaching health and safety procedures. We do believe, however, that promoting the positive aspects of health and safety brings the best results and provides the more sustainable solution. Passive promoters, such as posters and -off boxes, have a short-term effect; they serve a purpose as reminders and to facilitate the communication of close calls, but essentially need to be used in conjunction with other stimuli.

Our close-call reporting system has been in place for many years in one form or another, and it has become second nature for the safety department to receive a regular stream of cards from site teams identifying and correcting hazards and near-miss situations. It is all part of the McNicholas Lookout for Safety programme which has seen the company’s employee accident frequency rate for reportable accidents per 100,000 man-hours fall from 0.30 in March 2009 to 0.09 in March 2012.

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