Occasionally, those responsible for safety in an organization—whether they be concerned with the behavioural system, the safety system or the physical environment—call upon external resources such as professional safety consultants for help. When this occurs, it is important to bear in mind that the responsibility for the successful completion of the task (as distinguished from the performance of the task itself) of analysing a given system and making improvements to it cannot be delegated to outside agencies. Internal analysts (as opposed to external consultants) studying a system can usually obtain more reliable data because of their close familiarity with the organization. Nevertheless, the help of an outside consultant who has a wide range of experience with analysing safety problems and suggesting appropriate remedies, can be invaluable.

Seeking Outside Help

If there is no one in an organization who is familiar with safety laws and standards on the national level, it might be helpful to call in a safety regulations expert for assistance. Often there is no one in the organizational structure who may be able to analyse the behavioural system, and in such an eventuality it would be advisable to obtain help from someone who can do so. Kenneth Albert (1978) suggests that there are six specific occasions when outside help should be obtained:

• when special expertise is essential
• for a politically sensitive issue
• when impartiality is necessary
• if time is critical and the internal resources are not immediately available
• if anonymity must be maintained
• when the prestige of an outsider would be helpful.

Although Albert’s remarks were not made in connection with safety, the above points seem valid in determining the need for an outside safety consultant. Often a safety problem is intertwined with managerial personalities and is extremely difficult to solve internally. In such a situation a solution may be acceptable to all parties involved just because it came from an outsider. If an organization needs an analysis in a hurry it often can be done faster by an outside consultant, and often the outsider’s recommendation will carry more weight than the insider’s. In the field of safety, it appears that outside help is needed by many organizations with behavioural system analysis, some with safety system analysis and a few with physical condition analysis. However, with regard to the availability of safety consultants, supply and demand are inversely related, as there seems to be an ample supply of physical condition consultants, whereas there are fewer safety system analysts, and safety behavioural analysis experts are almost non-existent.

Safety Consultants

While the types of external safety consultant help will vary by country, they might generally be classified into these categories:

• insurance company field safety engineers or consultants
• government safety consultants (national, state, provincial and local)
• private consulting firms and full-time professional safety consultants
• part-time private consultants
• safety council or safety association consultants
• industry association consultants.

Insurance consultants. Most of the safety consultants and safety engineers in the United States who do not work for government or industry are employed by insurance firms. Many other safety professionals started their careers working for insurance companies. Almost all companies, except the very large and self-insured, are helped routinely by insurance loss-control representatives.

Government consultants. The providers of government consulting services vary from country to country and as to their affiliation (national, state, provincial or local) and the sorts of tasks they are permitted and qualified to perform. In the United States, the stated goal of the onsite consultation programme offered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is to obtain “safe and healthful workplaces for employees”. Thus by stipulation, the consultations will pertain only to physical conditions. An organization seeking this kind of help should consider OSHA’s offering. If, however, consulting help is needed with the safety system or the behavioural system, OSHA is the wrong place to go.

The defined onsite responsibilities of OSHA consultants are as follows:

• to identify and properly classify hazards
• to recommend corrective measures (short of engineering assistance)
• to arrange abatement dates for serious hazards
• to report to their supervisors any serious hazards which the employer has not acted upon
• to follow up on employer actions.

It is obvious that there are some aspects of receiving OSHA consulting service by this route that are unusual. The purpose of the consultants is to help improve physical conditions, but in two instances the consultants have additional duties:

• In the case of serious violations of OSHA standards, they must set abatement dates and follow up on them.
• In the case of imminent violations of the OSHA standards, they must refer them to either their supervisors (and thence to the Department of Labor hierarchy) or to the organization’s compliance staff for their immediate action.

In other words, OSHA consulting is true consulting only when nothing seriously wrong is found. If anything serious or imminently hazardous is found, the “customer” loses control of the decision process as to how and when to correct it.

Private consulting firms. A third source of external help is the (full-time) private consultant or the private consulting firms, who can provide help in any area—behavioural systems, safety systems or physical conditions—with none of the special limitations mentioned above. The only difficulty is ensuring that a consultant has been selected who has the necessary skills and knowledge to provide the desired work product.

Part-time private consultation and others. The fourth place to locate a private consultant is among those individuals who consult on a part-time basis to supplement their incomes. These consultants are either retired safety professionals who remain active, or college or university professors who supplement their income and stay knowledgeable about the world outside the academy. Here again the problem is to locate these people and ensure that the person hired has the competencies needed. Additional sources include consultants who make themselves available through national or local safety councils, and consultants with trade associations.

Locating a Consultant

In the first two categories of external help listed above, government and insurance, finding a consultant is easy. For example, in the United States, one can contact the appropriate workers’ compensation insurance carrier or the local OSHA grant office and ask them to visit the organization. Many other countries provide similar governmental and insurance resources.

Finding a consultant in the second two categories, private individual consultants and consulting firms, is more difficult. In the United States, for instance, several organizations publish directories of consultants. As an example, the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) publishes a national directory, which includes some 260 names of consultants. However, there seem to be considerable problems using this directory. An analysis of the 260 people on the list shows that 56% are individuals who indicate that they are for hire but who have not stated whether they work for companies and seek additional income or are full-time consultants or part-time retired safety consultants. An additional 32% were identified as being connected with consulting firms, 5% were connected with universities, 3% were insurance brokers, 3% were connected with manufacturing companies and 1% were associated with state governments. Actually, this directory, while advertised as a document which tells the reader “where the occupational safety/health experts are”, is really a roster of those people who have paid their dues and are members of the consultants division of the ASSE.

There is no easy way to find a consultant who has the expertise needed. Probably the best approaches other than insurance or government are to (1) network with other organizations with similar problems to see who they have used and whether they were satisfied with the results, (2) contact a professional organization at the national level, or (3) make use of professional directories such as the one above, keeping in mind the qualifications made concerning it.

Insurance Consulting

The most readily available of the outside consultants are insurance consultants. Since the beginning of the industrial safety movement, the insurance industry has been involved with safety. For many years. the only possible external help for most companies had been that available from the company’s insurance carrier. While this is no longer true, the insurance consultant is most often sought out.

The safety services departments of typical large insurance companies are charged with three specific functions:

• a sales assistance function
• an underwriting assistance function
• a customer service function.

Only the third of these is of value to the customer needing safety assistance. The underwriting assistance function is carried out by a field representative who is the “eyes and ears” of the insurance company, observing what is going on at the policyholder’s place of business and reporting back to the desk-bound underwriter. The third function consists of assisting customers to improve their loss prevention and safety programmes and reducing the likelihood of those customers having accidents and suffering financial loss. The assistance offered varies considerably from company to company.

Over the years, different philosophies have emerged which dictate the value of the service that the insurance company is able to provide. In some companies the safety services department is still very much a part of the underwriting function and their duties are to observe and report, while in others, the engineering department reports to the underwriting department. In some insurance companies, the loss-control department is independent, existing primarily to serve the customer and only secondarily to assist the sales and underwriting functions. When the primary mission of the service is to assist sales, customer service will suffer. If the loss-control department is part of underwriting, it may be difficult to get safety service from them, as they simply may not be staffed with trained, qualified people to provide that sort of service. If the loss-control department is not part of underwriting, then it may be able to provide good service to a customer. Conversely, it may also be quite ineffective, because numerous factors can intervene that can frustrate the effective provision of safety service.

When the service is an inspection-only service, as is very prevalent, the safety system and the behavioural system will be totally overlooked. When the service consists of the delivery of safety aids and materials, and nothing else, it is a virtually meaningless service. When the service consists primarily or totally of holding safety meetings for a customer, such as delivering the “canned” safety programme that the carrier’s home office has devised for use at all insured companies, or merely ensuring that physical conditions are up to code, it is also a weak service.

Depending upon the sort of philosophy that underlies the service of the carrier, additional services may be available over and beyond that provided by the representative that calls on the customer. Figure 1 outlines some typical additional services that can be particularly useful to customers, such as industrial hygiene, nursing and specialist (engineering and fire protection) services, depending upon the organization’s current needs. Training services are somewhat less common but are also valuable.

Figure 1. Additional services of consultants

Government Consultants

As with the insurance consultants, certain considerations, such as the following, must be weighed by a company before deciding whether or not to request the assistance of government consultants.

• whether the terms under which government assistance is offered are acceptable
• the competence of the people
• the limited scope of the consulting
• the inability to direct the consulting focus.

Probably the first consideration is whether or not a company wishes to become involved with a government at all. When using other kinds of consultants (either private or those provided by an insurance firm), whatever findings are obtained are strictly between the organization and the consultant. Whatever the company decides to do is a decision reserved to the company alone, which retains control over the disposition of the information. With government consultants this is not totally true. For example, if the consultants find one or both of two kinds of hazards—violations of the law and those immediately dangerous to life or health—the organization may not be able to retain the power of decision as to what to do about the hazard and when to do it.

Government consultants can provide assistance with determining whether or not an organization is in compliance with regulations and standards. This is an extremely narrow focus and has many weaknesses, as pointed out by Peters (1978) in his article “Why only a fool relies on safety standards”: “For those who know little about safety, it seems quite plausible and reasonable to expect that the existence of good safety standards and a sufficient conformance to those standards should be an adequate measure of safety assurance.” Peters suggests that not only is such an expectation in error, but also that reliance on standards will subvert professional activities that are needed to reduce loss.

Private Consulting

With the private consultant, whether an independent individual or an employee of a consulting firm, full or part time, there are no mandatory reporting requirements. The private consultant does not have to abide by the mandates of a required referral system; the relationship is strictly between the organization and the individual consultant. The scope of the consultation is limited, as the “customer” can very directly control the focus of the consultant’s activities. Thus the only thing the client has to worry about is whether or not the consultant is competent in the areas where help is needed and whether or not the fee is judged to be a fair one. Figure 2 lists some of the most basic functions of the management consultant.

Figure 2. Basic functions of the management consultant

G. Lippit (1969), who has written extensively on the consulting process, has identified eight specific consultant activities:

1. helps management examine organizational problems (e.g., organizes a management meeting for problem identification in the problem relationships between home and field personnel)
2. helps management examine the contribution of the proper dialogue to these problems (e.g., in relation to home and field office problems, explores with management how a conference on communication blocks might lead to problem solving)
3. helps examine the long- and short-range objectives of the renewal action (e.g., involves management in refining objectives and in setting goals)
4. explores, with management, alternatives to renewal plans
5. develops, with management, the renewal plans (e.g., based on the objectives, works with a task force to develop a process with built-in evaluation rather than simply submitting an independently developed plan to management for approval)
6. explores appropriate resources to implement renewal plans (e.g., provides management with a variety of resources both inside and outside the organization; the renewal stimulator must help management to understand what each resource can contribute to effective problem solving)
7. provides consultation for management on evaluation and review of renewal process (e.g., evaluation must be in terms of problem solving; working with management; the renewal stimulator must assess the current status of the problem, rather than check whether or not certain activities have been conducted)
8. explores with management the follow-up steps necessary to reinforce problem solving and outputs from the renewal process (e.g., encourages management to look at implications of the steps taken so far, and to assess the current status of the organization in terms of other actions that might be necessary to follow up on implementation of the renewal process).

Lippit (1969) has also identified five different positions which the consultants can adopt vis-à-vis their clients’ needs (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Five consultant approaches

Choosing a Consultant

When choosing a consultant, a process such as that given by figure 4 is suggested.

Figure 4. Choosing a consultant

Whether or not to use a consultant, and which one to use, ought to be determined by the user’s defined needs and by what kinds of skills and knowledge the consultant must have to be of real help. Then, it would seem logical to look for individuals or groups that have those sorts of skills and knowledge. It may be determined that as a result of this process, the job can be done without external help; for example, to locate the needed skills internally and apply those skills to the defined safety problems. Conversely, it may be decided to go to the outside for the skills needed.

Evaluating the Consultant’s Performance

After having worked with consultants for a period of time, a company can judge their individual performance and worth to the organization much more accurately (figure 5). As a result of the analysis provided by the consultant, the conclusion may be made that perhaps the remainder of the job, or a similar job, can be done as well using internal resources. Many companies do this now, and more are turning to it, in both safety and nonsafety areas.

Figure 5. Evaluating the consultant's performance

Problem-Solving Approaches

K. Albert, in his book, How to Be Your Own Management Consultant (1978), suggests that there are four different types of internal management problem-solving approaches:

• to hire a full-time internal consultant
• to put someone on a special assignment on a temporary basis
• to create a task force to work on a problem
• collaboration between an outside consultant and an internal consultant.

Furthermore, Albert suggests that no matter which approach is chosen, these ground rules must be followed for success:

• Get total support of top management.
• Establish confidentiality.
• Earn the acceptance of operation units.
• Avoid company politics.
• Report to a high level.
• Start slowly and maintain objectivity.

Back

The implementation of a safety programme should reflect its nature as a normal, day-to-day concern of general management. The need for information for decision making at all stages and for communication between all levels of the enterprise form the basis for successful implementation of such a programme.

Executive Level

Initially, the introduction of a new or modified safety programme will require the agreement of senior management, who may regard it as a cost/benefit decision to be made in light of competition for resources from elsewhere in the enterprise. The desire to reduce damages, pain and suffering in the workplace through the implementation of a safety programme will be tempered by the organization’s ability to sustain such an effort. Informed management decisions will require three elements:

1. an explicit description of the programme, which fully defines the proposed approach
2. an assessment of the impact of the programme on the company operations
3. an estimate of the costs of implementation with a prediction of the benefits that are likely to be produced.

The only exception to this will be when a safety programme is mandated by regulation and must be instituted in order to remain in business.

In the latter endeavour, it is useful to add an estimate of the true costs of the current safety record of the enterprise, as well as those costs covered by direct insurance or direct out-of-pocket expenses. The indirect costs are likely to be significant in all cases; estimates for serious incidents in the United Kingdom suggest that the real costs (borne by an enterprise as indirect costs) range from a factor of two to three up to a factor of ten times the actual, direct insurance costs. In those countries requiring compulsory insurance, the cost, and hence the savings, will vary widely depending on the social environment of each particular nation. Insurance costs in countries where the insurance carriers are required to cover full medical and rehabilitation costs, such as the United States, are likely to be higher than those in countries in which the treatment of the injured worker is part of the social contract. An ideal way to emphasize the significance of such losses is to identify the annual production required to generate revenue lost in paying for these losses. This is highly compatible with the concept that, while a business must necessarily assume the risk of doing business, it should be managing that risk in order to reduce the losses and improve its financial performance.

Management Level

Following acceptance at the senior management level, an implementation team should be formed to develop the strategy and the plan to introduce the programme of the roll-out plan. Such an approach is more likely to be effective than one that shifts the responsibility for safety to an individual designated as the safety engineer. The size and level of the involvement of this implementation team will vary widely, depending on the enterprise and the social environment. Nevertheless, input is essential from at least those with responsibility for operations, personnel, risk management and training, as well as key representatives of employee groups who will be affected by the programme. It is likely that a team of this composition will detect possible conflicts (for example, between production and safety) early on in the process, before attitudes and positions, as well as procedures, hardware and equipment, have become fixed. It is at this point that collaboration, rather than confrontation, is likely to provide a better opportunity for problem solving. The output of this team should be a document that identifies the corporate view of the programme, the key elements of the programme, the schedule for implementation and the responsibilities of those involved.

Care should be taken to ensure that the executive commitment is particularly evident to managers at the operational level at which the safety programme can be effected. Perhaps the most significant way of achieving this is to establish a form of chargeback, or allocation of the true costs of an accident directly to this level of management. The assumption of medical and indemnity costs (or their associated insurance costs) as a corporate overhead should be avoided by management. The unit manager, concerned with day-to-day financial control of the organization, should have the real costs of inadequate safety programmes appearing on the same balance sheet as the production and development costs. For example, a unit manager of an organization in which all the workers’ compensation costs are carried as a corporate overhead will be unable to justify expenditure of resources to remove a very serious hazard affecting a low number of workers. This difficulty can occur at the local level, despite the fact that such expenditures could produce major savings at the corporate level. It is essential that managers who are responsible for workplace design and operations bear the brunt, or reap the benefits, of the safety programme for which they are responsible.

Supervisor Level

The supervisor is responsible for understanding, transmitting and ensuring compliance with the managerial objectives of the safety programme. Successful safety programmes will address the question of educating and training supervisors in this responsibility. Although special safety trainers are sometimes used in educating workers, the supervisor should be responsible both for this training and for the attitudes of workers. In particular, informed supervisors see their responsibility as including the prevention of unsafe acts and exhibiting a high level of intolerance of unsafe conditions in the workplace. The control of the manufacturing process is accepted as the mainstream responsibility for supervisors; the application of such control will also produce benefits in the reduction of damages and unintentional injuries. Regardless of whether the safety function is staffed by safety officers, joint worker-management committees or consultants, the day-to-day responsibility for safe, error-free operation of the process should be a written component in the job description of supervisors.

Worker Level

At the beginning of the century, the primary emphasis for workers to perform safely was placed on negative reinforcement. Rules were set, workers were expected to follow those rules without question, and a transgression from the rules subjected the worker to disciplinary action. With increasingly complicated workplaces, flexible management systems and the rising social expectations of the workforce, the inadequacies and liabilities of such an approach have been revealed. It is not only in the military arena that flexibility and responsibility at the local level appears to be a vital component of high-performance units. This approach has led to an increasing reliance upon positive reinforcement and empowerment of the workforce, with the concomitant requirements for education and understanding. This thrust in safety mirrors the worldwide trend of labour to seek improvements in the quality of working life and the development of self-directed working groups.

Roll-out Plan

The key elements of the safety programme will identify the requirements for familiarization with the conceptual basis of the programme, the development of specific safety skills and the implementation of measurement tools. Responsibilities will be assigned to specific people within a phased programme at the point of introduction. The end of the roll-out process will be the establishment of a measurement system, or safety programme audit, in order to assess the continuing performance of the programme. Appropriate communication must be explicitly specified in the plan. In many cultures, multiple dialects and languages coexist in the workplace; and in certain cultures, a “managerial” dialect or language may normally not be used by the workforce. This problem includes the use of jargon and acronyms in communication between groups. Worker participation in the roll-out design may avert such shortcomings, and lead to solutions such as multilingual instructions and guidelines, a wider use of symbols and pictograms, and the selection of simple language. The wider approach to worker participation in the plan will produce benefits in terms of “buy-in” and acceptance of the plan’s goals and approaches.

The review process, or safety programme audit, should be repeated on a regular (annual) basis and will form the basis for 3-year rolling (or cyclical) plans. These plans will establish the future direction of the programme and provide the impetus for continual improvement, even in the face of changing production and process systems.

Continuous Improvement

Successful safety programmes do not remain static, but change to reflect changes in both corporate and social environments. Equally, successful programmes avoid dramatic but unachievable goals. Instead, a philosophy of continuous improvement and of continually rising standards is a key approach. The annual 3-year rolling plan is a good way to achieve that. Each year, the plan identifies broad goals and estimates with respect to likely costs and benefits that will develop over the next 3-year period. This will automatically provide for adaptation and continued improvement. As such plans are to be reviewed by management each year, an additional benefit will be that the objectives of the safety function are continuously aligned with corporate objectives.

Conclusion

The implementation of the safety programme must reflect its being an integral component of the management of the enterprise. Success would depend on clearly identifying the responsibilities of the various levels of management. The participation of workers in the implementation programme, and particularly the roll-out plan, is likely to produce benefits in the widespread adoption of the plan. The roll-out plan is a document which identifies the necessary activities, the timing of those activities and the responsibility for implementing each activity. The components of each activity—whether training, development of a working procedure or education—must be described in a way that is unambiguous to all levels of the enterprise. The final stage in the roll-out plan is to ensure that a continuous improvement cycle can occur by the installation of a safety programme audit on at least an annual basis.

Back

The moral imperative of an enterprise to actively seek to reduce damages, pain and suffering in the workplace will be tempered by the ability of the organization to sustain such an effort. Most human activities have risk attached to them, and risks in the workplace vary widely, from those much lower than those associated with normal, non-occupational activities, to very significantly more hazardous ones. An essential part of an organization is its willingness to accept the risks of business which have the potential for producing financial losses and are based on the pain and suffering of employees that result from accidents. A successful safety programme is intended to control a portion of these losses by reducing the risks, particularly where such risks arise from unsafe conditions or unsafe acts. The safety programme, therefore, is simply another subsystem of management. Like other management programmes, the safety programme consists of complementary strategies, procedures and standards. Similarly, the measure of a safety programme is performance—that is, how well it reduces accidents and the consequent losses.

A safe workplace depends on the control of hazards and unsafe behaviours, and control such as this is the primary function of management. A safety programme should produce complementary benefits: a reduction in damages and pain and suffering in the workforce (from both acute and chronic injuries and illnesses) and a resultant reduction in the financial burden to the organization due to such accidents. To achieve such benefits, a successful safety programme will follow the general approach of all management tools by establishing goals, monitoring performance and correcting deviations. This approach will be applied to a rather wide range of organizational activities, including organizational design, the production processes and the behaviour of the workers.

Safety in the Enterprise

A safe workplace is the end product of a complex and interactive process, and each process is a characteristic of an individual organization. A typical process is described in figure 1. The successful programme will need to address the various aspects of such a system.

Figure 1. The management process and occupational safety

Safety is often seen as a worker/workplace issue, but figure 1 indicates the pivotal role of management in safety as it responds to the overall goals of the organization. This can be seen from management’s clear responsibility for the selection of the industrial processes utilized, the control of supervision, working conditions, and the attitudes and procedures of the worker, all of which are factors that establish the extent of a risk in a particular workplace. Usually there is a large probability that no accident will occur, and a small probability that there will be an accident leading to either material damage or injury to a worker. A safety programme is concerned with reducing that risk and also minimizing injuries that occur.

Understanding the Accident Process

There are several competing theories of accident causation, but the model first proposed by Frank Bird (1974) is particularly valuable, as it provides a ready analogy which is compatible with many management practices. Bird likened the process that leads to injury or damage to a row of dominoes, standing on edge (see figure 2). When any domino falls, it can disturb the others and a sequence is actuated which eventually leads to the fall of the final piece, corresponding to the occurrence of an injury. This analogy implies that if any one of the dominoes is removed from the sequence, or is robust enough to withstand the previous impact, then the chain of events will be broken and the ultimate event of injury or damage will not occur.

Figure 2. The Bird domino theory as modified by E. Adams

Despite more recent models, this approach is still valuable, for it clearly identifies the concept of interventions in the accident process and the role of the effective safety programme in introducing them to inhibit the process and prevent injury.

Organizational Goals

There is little disagreement among authors that the single most significant aspect of any safety programme is the visible continuous commitment of senior management. This commitment must be recognized and reflected by succeeding levels of management down through the supervisory ranks. Although executive management often believes its concern with safety is apparent to all in the enterprise, such clarity can be lost at the successive layers of management and supervision. In successful safety programmes, the executive management must demonstrate a clearly identified commitment to the concept that safety is a responsibility of all employees, from senior management to the temporary worker. Such a commitment should take the form of a brief written document, provided for everyone in the enterprise and utilized at the earliest possible stage for inducting new workers into the organization. Some organizations have recently extended this by introducing the concept that the commitment to a safe and healthy workplace for all its employees and customers is an explicit corporate value. Such corporations frequently express this point of view in written documents, together with more traditional corporate values, such as profitability, reliability, customer service and community commitment.

Clarity of communication is particularly important in large organizations, where the direct link between the owners of the enterprise and the workforce can easily be broken. One of the clearest ways to achieve this is by the development of a series of written policies and procedures, starting with senior management’s establishing objectives for the safety programme. These should be clear, concise, achievable, supportable and, above all, unambiguous. It is not sufficient for a manager to assume that everyone down the chain of command shares a similar background, understanding and perception of the safety programme. These aspects must be made perfectly explicit. Equally, in spelling out the terms of this written procedure, it is essential to have realistic goals.

Management Control

Developing effective safety programmes from this original commitment requires that the measurement of safety performance be an integral part of the annual performance review of all management and supervisory staff. In keeping with the philosophy that safety is only one measure, among many, of the manager’s control of the process, safety performance must be included along with output, cost per unit, and profitability of the department. Such a philosophy, insofar as accidents occur from a lack of control of the process, appears to be highly compatible with the contemporary emphasis on total quality management (TQM). Both procedures adopt the position that deviations from normal are minimized in order to provide more control in achieving the corporate objectives. Additionally, the TQM concept of year-by-year, incremental improvement, is particularly significant in the long-term management of safety programmes.

Training and Education

Training and education are major components of any safety programme. This begins with the dissemination from senior management not only of the programme’s objectives and goals, but also information on progress towards those goals, measured through record keeping and cost accounting. Education, by which is meant a more general understanding of the nature of a hazard and of approaches to risk reduction, appears to work well, particularly in circumstances where there is still doubt about individual risk factors. One example is the epidemic of upper extremity cumulative disorders in Australia, Europe and North America. These disorders have become more significant, especially given that broad agreement does not exist on criteria for control of these disorders. The cumulative nature of such disorders, however, makes control of this problem particularly amenable to education. An increased awareness of risks allows individual workers to avoid such conditions by recognizing their exposures and modifying them by changes to procedures. Similarly, an understanding of the mechanics of low-back stresses can prepare workers to avoid some potentially dangerous work practices and substitute safer methods of accomplishing tasks.

Training is as necessary for management and supervisors as it is for the workers, so that they develop an understanding of their responsibilities and duties and increase their awareness levels of hazard potential. Individual workers need to be provided with clear and unambiguous process-relevant procedures for safe working. They should have an understanding of the hazards involved in the particular operations, and the likely effects of exposures to both toxic and physical agents. Additionally, managers, supervisors and workers should be familiar with the procedures for minimizing losses once an accident has occurred.

Safe Behaviour

Philosophically, the twentieth century has seen several swings in which safety programmes have allocated varying amounts of responsibility for the behaviour of workers to the individual, the employer and society. However, it is clear that safe behaviour is an absolutely crucial part of the safety process. An example of the significance of such behaviour is the development of group ethics, or team norms, in which the assumption of a risk by an individual might be perceived negatively by other members of the group. The converse is true: the acceptance of dangerous practices can become accepted as “normal”. Such behaviours can be modified by specific procedures of training and reinforcement, as shown by the highly successful programmes that combated the spread of AIDS from careless needle use in the health care industry. The heightened emphasis by management, coupled with training and educational materials, fundamentally changed the procedures involved and reduced the incidence of this hazard.

Participation

Increasingly, societies are mandating worker participation in safety programmes. Although the validation of such participation tends to be somewhat variable, worker involvement can be valuable at several stages in the safety process. Undoubtedly the people who are exposed to the hazards are extremely valuable resources for identifying hazards, and frequently are aware of potential solutions for reducing them. When problems have been identified and solutions have been developed, implementation will be greatly facilitated if the workforce has been a partner in record keeping, identifying, developing and validating the proposed interventions. Finally, in terms of understanding management’s commitment and resource constraints, participation embodied in a safety programme is beneficial.

Incentives

Incentives have been widely promulgated in some countries for increasing safe behaviours. The evidence that these incentives work is far from convincing, although, as part of a comprehensive safety programme, they can be used to demonstrate management’s continuing concern with safety, and they can form a significant feedback of performance. Thus, those safety programmes in which a small financial award is mailed to a recipient are likely to be ineffective. The same award, made in public by senior management, and based on specific performance measures—for example, 2,500 hours of work without any accidents—is likely to form positive reinforcement. In practice, in many industries the reverse is true—there are considerable incentives that reward poor safety behaviours. For example, piece-rate payment systems clearly reward workers for cutting out any time-consuming elements in a work cycle, including any which may be related to safe working procedures. Enterprises using incentives are more likely to need engineering controls and active surveillance techniques if they are truly committed to protecting the health and safety of the workforce.

Measurement and Control

Information is the lifeblood of management, and record keeping is an essential part of management information. Without a good source of data, progress toward accident reduction will be unreliable, and management’s willingness to expend resources to reduce risks is likely to be impaired. In some countries, collection of such data is a legislative requirement, and clearly a successful safety programme must facilitate the gathering and collation of such data. Satisfaction of regulatory requirements may be necessary, but frequently is not sufficient for a successful safety programme. Local variations in such data requirements may occur—for example, between jurisdictions—with the result that the value of such data is obscured; this development is a particular problem in organizations with multiple locations located in different regional or national jurisdictions. Consequently, the standardization of, and approach to, data collection must be specifically established as part of the safety programme. Thus, each programme must first identify the information needed for compliance with regulations, but then determine the need for further collection and analysis necessary for accident reduction.

Costs of Accidents

An essential management aspect of the data system is the identification of the cost of losses. Loss source analysis—that is, the determination of the actual sources of losses—will include the measurement of the number of incidents, the severity of incidents and the direct costs of damages, injuries and illnesses. Such information is essential if management is to maintain its focus on the true problems in the workplace. In many countries, the compensation costs—whether borne directly by the employer, by a federation, or by a state organization—can be assumed to be proportional to the pain and suffering in the workplace. Thus, in identifying the source of loss, management is discharging its responsibility for providing safe working conditions for the workforce in a way that is highly compatible with the cost/benefit analysis approach used in other activities.

Direct costs are not the true financial costs from accidents and injuries borne by an enterprise. In many countries around the world, and with various degrees of rigour, attempts have been made to estimate indirect costs associated with accidents. These indirect costs include loss in supervisory time, loss of productive time during the accident investigation and cleanup, retraining of replacement workers, and the amount of overtime required to meet production schedules. These indirect costs have been found to exceed the direct costs substantially, often by factors estimated to be in a range of three to ten times those of the direct insurance losses.

Determining Costs

The measurement of losses normally involves passive surveillance, which requires that the preceding history be examined in terms of frequency and severity of accidents. Passive surveillance is not sufficient for certain situations, particularly those with very low probabilities of errors occurring, but large, uncontrolled potential damage in the case that they do occur. In such circumstances, particularly in complex process industries, it is necessary to perform an assessment of potential losses. It is clearly unacceptable that, simply because no process has yet claimed a victim, processes involving large amounts of energy or of toxic materials should not be analysed prior to such an accident. Thus, in some industries, it is wise to institute active surveillance, particularly where similar processes elsewhere have led to losses. Information from trade associations and from national and international labour and safety organizations is a valuable source that can be used to establish pre-incident estimates which are likely to be valid and valuable. Other techniques, including fault tree analysis and failure mode analysis, are discussed elsewhere in this Encyclopaedia. In circumstances such as those involving chemical exposures, active surveillance may include routine medical examinations of the worker. Such an approach is particularly significant where well-established limit values have been determined. This approach of estimating potential and actual losses highlights a feature that the successful safety programme should address, and that is the difference between day-to-day risk and the effect of a potential catastrophe.

Information Feedback

The use of information feedback has been shown to be crucial in a wide range of organizational activities, including safety programmes. The calculation of both incidence rates and severity rates will form the basis for rational deployment of resources by the enterprise and for measuring the success of the programme. This information is as valuable to management for evaluating the safety function as it is to workers in the execution of the programme. However, the presentation of such data should reflect the end user: aggregated data will allow management comparison of operating units; department-specific data and visual aids (such as thermometer charts indicating the number of safe work days at the shop-floor level) can enhance understanding of, and buy-in from, the whole spectrum of employees.

Field Observation

The information system is an off-line component of a successful safety programme, which must be complemented by a hands-on approach to safety in the workplace. Such an approach would involve the walk-through, in which an informed and trained observer subjectively identifies hazards in the workplace. In addition to identifying hazards, the walk-through is particularly suitable for detecting issues of non-compliance with both corporate and legislative requirements. For example, the reduction of hazards by machine guarding is ineffective if many of the machines have had the guards removed—a typical finding of a walk-through. As the walk-through is an open-ended and adaptive procedure, it is also the easiest way to detect deficiencies in the training of the worker, and possibly those of the supervisor.

Effective safety programmes should utilize this technique on a regular but random basis. The walk-through, however, is not the only way of identifying hazards. The workers themselves can provide essential information. In many cases, they have experience of “near misses” that have never been reported, and are consequently in a good position to discuss these with the safety officer during the walk-through. Workers in general should be encouraged by supervision to report safety defects both actual and potential.

Accident Investigation

All accidents must be investigated by the responsible supervisor. Accidents such as those in the process industry often require investigation by a team of knowledgeable persons representing diverse interests, possibly including an outside expert. Successful programmes frequently involve workers in such accident investigations. This involvement brings benefits in terms of better understanding of the incident and of rapid dissemination of recommendations throughout the workforce. From figure 1, it is clear that, in this context, accidents are not only those events that conclude in an injury to a worker, but rather, events that encompass damage to equipment or materials or even significant events that result in neither (known as “near accidents”). The figure indicates that such incidents should be subject to management investigation and control even if, fortuitously, no worker is injured. Avoidance of similar incidents in the future will reduce the risk that they will result in injury. Accident investigations that seek to lay blame appear to be less successful than those seeking methods to determine cause. In an investigation that is seen to be an attempt to blame a worker, peer pressure and other psychosocial behaviours can severely degrade the quality of information collected.

The essentials of an accident report will include a formalized process, involving written descriptions of the events that occurred before, during and after the accident as well as an assessment of the factors that led to the accident. The report should end with a clear recommendation for action. The recommendation could range from immediate modification of the work process or, in the case of complex situations, to the need for further, professional investigation. Such reports should be signed by the responsible supervisor or the leader of the investigation team, and forwarded to an appropriate level of management. Management review and acceptance of the recommendations is an essential part of the accident reporting process. The signature of the manager should indicate his or her endorsement or rejection of the proposed changes to prevent future accidents, and rejections should be accompanied by an explanation. Accident investigations that do not lead to an individual responsibility for action for the recommendations are likely to be ineffective, and rapidly become viewed by all involved as irrelevant. A successful safety programme seeks to ensure that lessons learned from a particular incident are shared elsewhere within the organization.

Hazard Control

The best intervention as regards hazard control will always be the removal of the hazard by engineering design, substitution or modification. If the hazard is removed (or, at second best, shielded or guarded), then irrespective of the human variability arising from training, individual differences of strength, attention, fatigue or diurnal rhythm, the operator will be protected.

Unfortunately, in some cases, the costs of achieving this engineering design can reach or exceed the limits of economic liability. Certain processes are inherently much riskier than others, and feasible engineering designs are only partial solutions. Construction projects carried out at elevated sites, deep coal mining, steel production and over-the-road driving all require exposure of employees to higher than “normal” risks. In such cases, administrative control and personal protective devices may be necessary. Administrative control may involve specific training and procedures to reduce risks: consider, for example, the prohibition against individual workers entering confined spaces, or the provision of lockout systems designed to isolate dangerous equipment and processes from the operator during the work cycle. These procedures can be effective, but require continual maintenance. In particular, work practices tend to move away from compliance with the necessary administrative procedures. This trend must be halted by the implementation of procedures for training, and refresher training as well, for all workers and supervisors involved in the system.

The final component in hazard control is the use of personal protective devices, which include respirators, protective gloves, whole-body harnesses and hard hats, to mention just a few. In general, it can be seen that such devices are valuable when the hazards have not been entirely removed from the workplace, nor controlled by administrative procedures. They are intended to reduce the effect of such hazards on the worker, and typically are subject to concerns of improper use, design limitations, inadequate supervisor oversight, and failure of maintenance.

First Aid

Despite the best attempts to reduce hazards, the successful safety programme must address the post-accident scenario. The development of first aid and emergency medical treatment capabilities can provide major benefits for the safety programme. A protocol must be established for medical treatment following an accident. Selected workers must be familiarized with the written instructions for summoning medical assistance to the worksite. Such assistance should be prearranged, for a delay can seriously affect the condition of an injured worker. For accidents producing minor injuries, the inherent losses can be reduced by the provision of point-of-incident medical treatment. In-plant treatment for minor cuts and bruises, contusions and so on, can reduce operators’ time away from their tasks.

The first aid capability must include acceptable levels of supplies, but more important, adequate medical/first aid training. Such training can directly affect the probability of survival in case of a potentially mortal injury, and can reduce the actual severity of a range of less serious accidents. First aid action such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or the stabilization of haemorrhaging, can make the difference between life and death to patients in need of major emergency treatment. Frequently, the provision of immediate first aid at the accident site provides the opportunity for subsequent major surgical interventions. Such a capability is even more significant in nonurban enterprises, where medical treatment may be delayed by a matter of hours.

First aid can also facilitate the efficient return to work of a worker involved in a minor injury. Such in-house intervention has been shown to reduce the need for lengthy medical visits outside the enterprise, and thus prevents a loss of productivity. Perhaps even more significant is the reduced chance of the medicalization of the injury, which is seen as an emerging problem in several countries.

Catastrophe Planning

Routinely, at least annually, a safety programme should identify potential causes of catastrophe. In some circumstances—for example, with the storage of large amounts of flammable or hazardous materials—the focus of attention is not too difficult. In other circumstances, great ingenuity may be required to make meaningful suggestions to plan for such catastrophes. By definition, catastrophes are rare, and it is unlikely that a particular enterprise would have suffered a similar catastrophe earlier. Definition of medical management, communication flows and managerial control of the catastrophe situation should form part of the safety programme. It is clear that in many enterprises such annual plans would be rather minimal, but the very exercise of developing them can be valuable in increasing the management’s awareness of some of the risks that the business assumes.

Conclusion

The successful safety programme is not a book, or a binder of notes, but a conceptual plan to reduce the risks of injury as measured on the basis of both incidents and severity. Like all other processes in an enterprise, the safety process is the responsibility of management rather than that of a safety engineer or an individual worker. Management is responsible for setting the goals, providing resources, establishing means of measuring progress towards those goals and taking corrective action when this progress is unsatisfactory. In order to do this, information is the key requirement, followed in importance by communication of the objectives at all levels within the enterprise. At each level, from executive through management supervisor to the individual worker, contributions to safe working conditions can be made. But at the same time, organizational, procedural and behavioural inadequacies may regrettably prevent such contributions from occurring. The successful safety programme is one which recognizes and utilizes such factors in developing an integrated approach to reducing the pain and suffering in the workplace which arises from injuries and disease.

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Safety incentive programmes have their intended effect: a reduction in the loss due to accidents. They also have positive side-effects. For one thing, they are a profitable proposition in industry, as the savings usually exceed the costs. For another, they may lead to better company morale. Incentive programmes can help improve the general organizational climate and, therefore, make a positive contribution to productivity over and above the gain due to accident reduction. Group-based safety incentive programmes give workers a common cause with each other as well as with management. Reinforcing safe acts “removes the unwanted side effects with discipline and the use of penalties; it increases the employees’ job satisfaction; it enhances the relationship between the supervisor and employees” (McAfee and Winn 1989).

Cost-Effectiveness of Incentive Programmes

There have been many cases, in manufacturing, construction and other industries, in which the accident rate per employee was reduced by 50 to 80%. Sometimes the results are better still, as was the case in two mining companies in which the total lost days dropped by 89 and 98% respectively (Fox, Hopkins and Anger 1987). Sometimes the results are more modest. A cable plant reduced the accident costs per employee by 35%; a manufacturer of tobacco products by 31% (Stratton 1988); a grain processing and transportation company by 30%; a Pacific resort complex by 39%, and a manufacturer of food products by 10% (Bruening 1989).

These favourable effects continue to last over long periods of time. Incentive plans in two American mines were studied over periods of 11 and 12 years. In one mine the number of days lost due to accidents was reduced to about 11% of baseline and in another to about 2%. Benefit/cost ratios varied from year to year between 18 and 28 at one mine and between 13 and 21 at the other. There was no sign that the effectiveness of the incentive plans diminished over time at either mine (Fox et al. 1987). A high benefit/cost ratio—about 23 to 1—has also been observed for incentives for safety in the resort hotel business.

The ratios between benefits (savings due to accidents prevented) and programme costs (bonuses and administration) are usually greater than 2 to 1, meaning that companies can make money on such accident-prevention efforts. This is largely due to reduced fees to workers’ compensation boards and other insurance, as well as to increased production, reduced downtime and a lesser need for replacement workers.

Requirements for Effective Incentive Programming

Incentive programmes, when properly designed, carry the approval of the people to whom they are addressed, and in this respect they compare favourably with the other forms of safety motivation such as laws, rule books and policing, which are much less popular. To put it plainly: a small carrot is not only much better liked than a big stick, it is also much more effective. Only one negative side-effect has been noticed so far, and that is the tendency of people to under-report accidents when incentive programmes are in effect. Fortunately, such under-reporting has been found to occur with respect to minor accidents only (McAfee and Winn 1989).

Past experience with incentive programmes also shows that some programmes have had much greater effect than others. For instance, a German incentive plan which promised professional truck and van drivers a bonus of DM 350 for each half-year of driving without being at fault in an accident, produced a reduction in direct accident cost to less than one-third in the first year of application and remained at that level for over three decades (Gros 1989). In the California “good driver” experiment, where drivers in the general population were offered free extension of their driver’s licence by one year in return for each year of accident-free driving, the accident rate dropped by 22% in the first year of the programme (Harano and Hubert 1974).

An attempt has been made here to cull the ingredients of the most effective incentive plans from published reports. This has by necessity largely been based on inference, because to date there are no well-controlled experiments in which one particular incentive characteristic is being varied and all other factors are kept constant. For obvious reasons, such experiments are not likely to be forthcoming; industry is not in the business of running such experiments. Never the less, the items that appear in the checklist below would seem to make very good sense (Wilde 1988; McAfee and Winn 1989; Peters 1991).

Managerial vigour

The introduction and long-term maintenance of incentive programmes should be conducted with managerial vigour, commitment and coherence. Workers or drivers should not only be informed of the programme in existence, but they should also frequently be reminded of it in attention-catching ways. In order to motivate and to inform the relevant audience, those in charge of incentive programmes should provide clear and frequent knowledge of results to the audience (Komaki, Barwick and Scott 1978).

Rewarding the “bottom line”

Incentive programmes should reward the outcome variable (the fact of not having caused an accident), not some process variable like wearing safety glasses or seat-belts, being sober or obeying shop-floor safety rules. This is because rewarding specific behaviours does not necessarily strengthen the motivation towards safety. A potential safety benefit due to an increased frequency of one specific form of “safe” behaviour may simply be offset by road users less frequently displaying other forms of “safe” acting. “The risk is here that while the rewarded behaviour may improve, other related safe behaviours may deteriorate” (McAfee and Winn 1989).

Attractiveness of the reward

Incentive programmes can be expected to be more successful to the extent that they widen the difference between the perceived benefit of not having an accident and the perceived disadvantage of having an accident. Rewards for accident-free operation in industry have taken many different forms, ranging from cash to public commendation. They include trading stamps, lottery tickets, gift certificates, shares of company stock, extra holidays, promotions and other privileges. While the flexible use of money prevents satiation from occurring, merchandise, especially customized merchandise, may constitute a lasting reminder of the value of safety. Merchandise items also have a “value-added” component in the sense that they can be obtained at a lower price than the recipients would likely have to pay if they bought the items at retail. In the United States, a substantial industry has sprung up to provide the merchandise for safety prizes. Gift certificates hold a middle ground between cash and merchandise; they can be put to flexible use and yet be personalized and imprinted with a commemorative message. Drivers have been rewarded with cash, automobile insurance rebates and free licence renewal.

Awards do not have to be large to be effective. In fact, a case can be made for relatively small recognition awards, such as 1- and 5-year safe driving pins, these being preferable in some cases. Small awards make it possible to hand out awards more frequently, they are probably less conducive to under-reporting of accidents, and they may foster the internalization of pro-safety attitudes through the process of cognitive dissonance reduction (Geller 1990). When a small reward changes a person’s behaviour, that person may justify the change by reasoning that the change was for safety’s sake rather than due to the insignificant inducement. No such internalization of pro-safety attitudes is necessary when the external inducement is large, because in that case it fully justifies the behaviour change.

It should be noted, however, that the attitude-shaping effect of modest awards can take place only after the operators have changed their behaviour for whatever minor external inducement. So, the award should be desirable enough to achieve some behaviour change to begin with. Rewards should have “perceived value” in the minds of the recipients. In some cases, a small material reward might imply a major social reward because of its “symbolic function”. Safe behaviour may thus become the “right thing to do”. This might help explain why a modest incentive such as free licence renewal for one year produced a major reduction in the accident rate of California drivers. Moreover, analogous to earlier studies that found that accident rates in dangerous tasks (such as piece-work) were exponentially related (to the power of three) to higher wages, it may be suggested that relatively small increments in wages for having no accidents should reduce the accident rate by a larger amount (Starr 1969).

Progressive safety credits

The amount of the incentive should continue to grow progressively as the individual operator accumulates a larger number of uninterrupted accident-free periods; for example, the bonus for ten uninterrupted years of accident-free operation should be greater than ten times the bonus for one year of accident-free performance.

Programme rules

The operational rules of the programme should be kept simple, so that they are easily understood by all persons to whom the programme applies. It is of paramount importance that the incentive programme should be developed in cooperation and consultation with those people to whom it will be applied. People are more likely to actually strive for goals they have helped define themselves (Latham and Baldes 1975).

Perceived equity

The incentive programme should be perceived as equitable by those to whom it is addressed. The bonus should be such that it is viewed as a just reward for not causing an accident in a given time period. Similarly, incentive systems should be designed such that those workers who are not eligible for the (top) award do not resent the system, and that those who are rewarded will be seen by others as justly receiving the award. As chance plays a part in having or not having an accident, the actual receipt of the award may be made dependent on the additional requirement that the accident-free worker in question also maintains cleanliness and safety in his or her workstation. In the event that disincentives are used as well, it is necessary that the public view the penalty imposed as justified.

Perceived attainability

Programmes should be designed such that the bonus is viewed as within potential reach. This is of particular importance if the bonus is awarded in a lottery system. Lotteries make it possible to hand out greater awards, and this may enhance the attention-getting appeal of an incentive programme, but fewer among the people who have accumulated the safety credit will receive the bonus. This, in turn, may discourage some people from making an active attempt to accumulate the safety credit to begin with.

Short incubation period

The specified time period in which the individual has to remain accident-free in order to be eligible for the bonus should be kept relatively short. Delayed rewards and penalties tend to be discounted and are thus less effective in shaping behaviour than more immediate consequences. Periods as short as one month have been used. If longer periods apply, then monthly reminders, status reports and similar materials should be used. In the California experiment cited above, those drivers whose licenses were coming up for renewal within 1 year after being informed of the incentive programme showed a greater reduction in accident rate than was true for people whose licenses were not to be renewed until two or three years later.

Rewarding group as well as individual performance

Incentive programmes should be designed to strengthen peer pressure towards having no accident. Thus, the plan should not only stimulate each individual operator’s concern for his or her own safety, but also motivate them to influence peers so that their accident likelihood is also reduced. In industrial settings this is achieved by extending a bonus for accident-free performance of the particular work team in addition to the bonus for individual freedom of accidents. Team bonuses increase the competitive motivation towards winning the team award. They also have been found effective in isolation—that is, in the absence of awards for individual performance. A dual bonus plan (individual cum team) can be further strengthened by informing families of the safety award programme, the safety goals and the potential rewards.

Prevention of accident under-reporting

Thought should be given to the question of how to counteract operators’ tendency not to report the accidents they have. The possibility that incentive programmes may stimulate this tendency seems to be the only currently identified negative side-effect of such programmes (while occasionally moral objections have been raised against rewarding people for obtaining a goal they should aspire to on their own, without being “bribed into safety”). Some incentive programmes have clauses providing for deduction of safety credits in case accidents are not reported (Fox et al. 1987). Fortunately, only those accidents that are minor remain unreported at times, but the greater the safety bonus, the more frequent this phenomenon may become.

Reward all levels of the organization

Not only are shop-floor workers to be rewarded for safe performance, but their supervisors and middle management as well. This creates a more cohesive and pervasive safety orientation within a company (thus shaping a “safety culture”).

Whether or not to supplement rewards with safety training

Although educating towards safety is different from motivating towards safety, and a person’s ability to be safe should be clearly distinguished from that person’s willingness to be safe, some authors in the field of incentives in industrial settings feel that it may be helpful to safety if workers are told through what specific behaviours accidents can be avoided (e.g., Peters 1991).

Maximizing net savings versus maximizing benefit/cost

In the planning of an incentive programme, thought should be given to the question of what actually constitutes its primary goal: the greatest possible accident reduction, or a maximal benefit/cost ratio. Some programmes may reduce the accident frequency only slightly, but achieve this at a very low cost. The benefit/cost ratio may thus be higher than is true for another programme where the ratio between benefits and costs is lower, but which is capable of reducing the accident rate by a much greater degree. As distinct from the issue of the size of the benefit/cost ratio, the total amount of money saved may well be much greater in the latter case. Consider the following example: Safety programme A can save $700,000 at an implementation cost of $200,000. Programme B can save $900,000 at a cost of $300,000. In terms of benefit/cost, A’s ratio is 3.5, while B’s ratio equals 3.0. Thus, judged by the benefit/cost criterion, A is superior, but if net savings are considered, the picture is different. While programme A saves $700,000 minus $200,000, or $500,000, programme B saves $900,000 minus $300,000, or $600,000. In terms of net savings, the larger programme is to be preferred.

Concluding Comment

Like any other accident countermeasure, an incentive plan should not be introduced without evaluating its short-term and long-term feasibility and its best possible form, nor without provision for scientifically adequate evaluation of its implementation costs and its observed effectiveness in reducing the accident rate. Without such research the surprising effect of one particular reward programme would never have come to light. Although there seems little chance for a safety incentive to actually have a negative effect, there is one variation of a series of California reward/incentive programmes for the general driving public that did produce worse driving records. In this particular programme component, a benefit was given to drivers with no accidents on their records without their prior knowledge of that benefit. It took the form of an unexpected reward rather than an incentive, and this highlights the importance of the distinction for safety promotion. The term incentive refers to a pre-announced gratification or bonus extended to workers or drivers on the specific condition that they do not have an accident of their own fault within a specified future time period.

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