Guess what? Safety programs can help improve driver behavior. It’s a fact. An effective incentive and disciplinary strategy can aid in ensuring the program’s success. The following information provides examples and considerations to aid managers to develop strategies that are right for their organizations.
Risk identification and coaching should be the backbone of any safety programs and it should be judged on its success in changing driver behavior. However, there are times when a driver doesn’t respond to coaching, training or other forms of feedback. Despite numerous efforts by management, he or she simply refuses or is unable to change. This is where a progressive disciplinary strategy may be needed to influence positive change. As a balance to a disciplinary plan, we encourage clients to also have a program in place to recognize and reward drivers excelling in the program.
Today, we are going to describe several strategies for you to consider, along with multiple positive reward/incentive programs you may find of interest. Every organization is different so treat these examples as a potential framework for you to develop a program that is best for your organization.
Implementation of a safety programs can be a significant change for your organization. Consequently, fleets often make major changes to existing disciplinary policies during the early stages of implementation. Instead, they often delay, perhaps six months to one year before considering significant adjustments. Advantages to this are:
- It gives your organization and its employees time to acclimate to the program.
- You will have accumulated enough data from the program to make fact-based adjustments to your policies.
How to Use Positive Reinforcement
Positive reinforcement of desired behaviors not only encourages employees to repeat those behaviors but also can spur employees to perform beyond the minimum expectations. Positive reinforcement can have a longer lasting impact than behavior change driven by discipline for undesirable behaviors.
Positive reinforcement changes more than just the behavior, it changes the attitude about the behavior. This also applies when addressing safe driving behaviors with your employees. Often, the risky behavior will return unless the attitude about the behavior is changed.
The following are examples of how you can use positive reinforcement within the framework of your own safety programs. Each organization is different, so these ideas may not be ideal for your circumstances. They are presented to foster further thought on your part as to what is best for your organization.
First, try recognizing a single event. This is a recognition strategy used by some clients when a specific event has been identified as a “Positive Recognition Event” or other instances where a driver exhibits superior safe driving skills or courteousness. These are the actions taken by one of our clients when an event meets their criteria:
- Bring the driver in to thank him or her for the professional driving. Ask for permission to use the video showing their good driving skills in a future safety meeting.
- Arrange for someone from the management team to be on hand at the next safety meeting to publicly thank the driver. The more senior the manager is, the more impact the recognition will have. Do not underestimate the power of positive recognition.
- At the safety meeting, play the good driving video and facilitate group feedback. Conclude by explaining what stood out as good driving in this event.
- Have management thank the driver for his or her good driving behavior. If suitable, include a reward such as a gift certificate to a local restaurant, company apparel, points towards a safety incentive program or other items.
You can also try running with a best event of the month. This client has each site in a region select what they believe to be their best good driving event that month. These videos are aggregated and then shared at the next month’s safety meeting. Those in attendance at the safety meeting vote to determine which event was the best. The winner receives a certificate of thanks as well as a gift card to a local restaurant. Truck drivers in the videos are asked in advance for permission to share the video with the group.
Remember how much fun wheel of fortune games are? Try one with your people! This is a strategy used by one client to provide recognition for high performing drivers, spur competitiveness, and energize their safety meetings. Here is how it works:
On a monthly basis, each company location runs a report to identify all drivers who have not had a coachable event or preventable collision during that period. At their monthly safety meeting, drivers listed on this report get a turn spinning the “Wheel of Fortune”. On the wheel are a variety of prizes such as a $10 Subway gift card, movie tickets, or rights to a prime company parking spot for the month.
The client reports several advantages with this activity including:
- Provides an opportunity for managers to thank drivers for doing a good job.
- Inspires drivers to get better because they all want to “spin the wheel”.
- Improves driver perception of the program.
- Makes for an engaging safety meeting.
- Very low cost and easy to administer.
Be Progressive in Your Policies
Your best drivers are those who exhibit safe driving on an on-going basis, not just in a single event. These high performing drivers rarely trigger any events and thus their performance can potentially go unnoticed. It is important that these top-tier drivers are identified, recognized, and rewarded for their personal commitment to safe driving. Generate truck driver reports to isolate high performing drivers. Publish or announce the list of top drivers each month and thank them for doing a superior job. Perhaps you can even tie a measurable decrease in injury to an effective coaching method.
Be sure to remove names of drivers who were not active during this period or are no longer with your organization. You may also want to exclude any truck drivers with other driving related issues during this period such as a preventable collision or safety violations.
Many trucking companies also run this report on a quarterly basis and annual basis to perpetuate their recognition program. As the time period of the report is longer, the list of qualifying drivers will be smaller making the accomplishment greater. Publish or announce these lists. You may also wish to include escalating rewards, as the length of time a driver is on this list increases.
You could also publish the Driver’s Report displaying the top drivers at the end of each month and posts it in the break room. They have no additional communication surrounding this. They report that once it is posted most drivers stop and look to see if his or her name is on the list. Truck drivers who are not on the list often get a friendly ribbing by co-workers. This simple posting of the list spurs competition amongst the drivers.
Don’t Forget Your Coaches
Realizing that effective, committed coaches are essential to getting the most from your safety and coaching program, you need to institute a program to reward and recognize your best program coaches.
Try something called the “Coaching Effectiveness” metric as the basis of a coach recognition program. Each active coach in the system has a Coaching Effectiveness score. This score is based on the percentage of behaviors that were coached and not repeated in the following 60 days. A higher Coaching Effectiveness score means fewer coached behaviors have been repeated.
On a quarterly basis this client reviews the Coaching Effectiveness Metric for each of their active coaches. A 70% Coaching Effectiveness score is their minimum expectation for each coach. Coaches with a 90% or greater Coaching Effectiveness score receive special recognition as well as a gift certificate to a local restaurant.
For good measure, you could also exclude coaches with limited activity (in their case less than 10 coaching events during the quarter), as well as any coaches with 10% or more of their events overdue for coaching communications with the drivers.
All new drivers could be afforded a 90-day grace period on the policy with the exception of egregious events. Four coaching events that occur in a combination of any category during a 90-day period will result in a step level of progressive discipline, only counting the most serious event behavior.
When more than one infraction occurs during an event, the most severe infraction will be considered to determine appropriate discipline level. Any behavior that results in an accident or near accident may be escalated to the next step in the disciplinary process up to and including termination. A Review Committee comprised of Department Manager, EHS Manager, HR Manager as well any other necessary personnel will make this determination.
The fact is, there are so many ways you could manage your motivation and incentive program. And with so many trucking companies out there competing for qualified truck drivers, how do you stand out? By investing in programs that invest in your people, you’ll hang a sign saying you want only the best.