In this episode of the Longshore Insider Podcast, AEU Director of Loss Control Jason Lake joins host Mike Jernigan to explain how incentive programs can be developed, promoted, and implemented to create safer workplaces and drive employee engagement.
Announcer:
Welcome to the Longshore Insider Podcast from the American Equity Underwriters. At AEU, we are passionate about helping waterfront employers protect their workers and their businesses. Join us as we explore practical strategies for improving workplace safety, effective claims management, and much more. So let's dive in. Welcome to the Longshore Insider Podcast.
Mike Jernigan:
Hello, and thank you for listening to the AEU Longshore Insider Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Jernigan. In our latest series, I'm speaking with AEU's very own loss control managers to learn how they help organizations across the maritime industry develop, maintain, and improve safety cultures. I'm joined today by Jason Lake, and we're going to be talking about safety incentive programs in the maritime industry. Jason, it's great to have you with us.
Jason Lake:
Thank you, Mike.
Mike Jernigan:
So Jason, tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get started in safety?
Jason Lake:
So like a lot of people in my kind of age group, I got into safety sort of tangentially or accidentally. Career-wise, I started out, I went to the United States Merchant Marine Academy. I'm from Indiana, so I had no concept of what the Merchant Marine was when I showed up at school. Had a quick education. And then after that for eight years, I ended up sailing on cargo vessels, primarily owned by the US Navy. So we were carrying military cargo. So I was working as a mate.
So third mate initially moved my way up to the last two years I was a chief mate. So through that, through the operations, we had a lot of safety responsibilities with the safety program that we were implementing. And as a chief mate, that I was kind of directing. So I had to kind of learn those on the job. I was the end user of a lot of the safety programs. After that eight years of sailing, I was getting married and I started looking for an opportunity that would not take me away from my family for four to six months at a time.
Mike Jernigan:
Sure. Settle down a little bit.
Jason Lake:
Yeah. Yeah. Just to settle down a little bit. And then stumbled across job posting for AEU for Loss Control Manager and I felt like it'd be a good fit. So I applied and been working for AEU ever since. That was in 2013. So I've been with AEU for 12 years now. And through that, that shift took me from the operation, the end user side, to more of the recommendation, development side of the safety programs.
So I dove into that kind of headfirst and tried to get some more formal education on safety programs. So I ended up going the track of pursuing my CSP, which I was eventually able to get. But through that process, you kind of are exposed to a lot of the nuance behind what goes into safety, whether it's from a physics and chemistry standpoint or a behavioral science standpoint. So that was kind of the route that I took to get to my role in the safety programs.
Mike Jernigan:
It sounds like an interesting background, and I'm sure that's given you a lot of experience and you've seen a lot of things. And what we're talking about today and we're trying to help people learn about is safety incentive programs. So your time in the industry, I'm sure you've seen these safety incentive programs in action. But first, let's just start out with what is a safety incentive program?
Jason Lake:
A safety incentive program is a initiative that a company puts into place to recognize and reward safe behavior that would promote a culture of safety within their organization. It's a very wide category and it can take on a lot of different forms, but at the root of it, what it is, it's an intentional way for a company to recognize and reward usually above and beyond safe behavior from their employees.
Mike Jernigan:
So going back to your experience in the field, you have seen these incentive programs. Can you tell me what an effective safety program looks like?
Jason Lake:
Well, first and foremost, an effective safety program is, I would say, consistent. And for that consistency, it takes a lot of support from the top down, a lot of support from management. You need a complete buy-in from upper management to follow through on what the safety program says that they're going to reward and recognize. But again, it can take many different forms. I'll give you one example that I experienced firsthand when I was, again, an end user working on cargo vessels.
What we had was every month, we had a safety committee onboard the ship and they would take all of our near miss reports that had been submitted for that month. And what they would do is they would go through them and they would identify the best catch and also the best recommendation that was the near miss form had a spot where the submitter could put down what they recommended as a fix for the problem.
And so what the safety committee would do is they would look at those and whoever had either the most innovative or the most workable solution to the identified problem would get a safety recognition and a reward. And what was interesting about that is the reward was pretty minimal. It was like 20 bucks or something like that. But what was more impactful was that the recognition happened in front of all your peers. So while we were having a safety meeting, they would highlight the winner for the month, they'd get the reward and it would be like a, "Yay, good job," applause kind of scenario.
And that really set the tone of people trying to look out for ways that they could improve the safety around the vessel. So that's one that I had personal experience with. What we've done recently at AEU, about two years ago, we started a advisor council. So we asked some of the safety professionals from different members of ours to kind of collaborate and we asked them to do a couple things.
One was give us feedback on our loss control services to see how we were doing and if we were meeting their needs, but we also asked them to work together to try to give advice or recommendations to the rest of our members. And what they self-identified as a worthwhile project was a recommendation document for safety incentive programs. So what they were able to do is kind of collectively give their input on ways that they had been successfully implementing safety incentive programs to try to help the rest of our members with that advice.
Mike Jernigan:
So you mentioned about, that it can be $20 or anything, right? Or anything, the incentive itself. But really what's more important is the recognition and acknowledgement that aspect of the... The incentive has to be there, right? So that has to be a tangible item. Is that correct?
Jason Lake:
Not necessarily. Recognition programs do go a long way. So some of the ways that we've seen that done, companies that have a, like I say, a corporate newsletter, something like that, a lot of times they can highlight. What we would say if you're doing that is give specific examples. Don't just say, "Bob worked really safely this month." Give a specific example of an incidence where Bob went above and beyond his duties to demonstrate good, safe practices. So it can be solely recognition.
And again, what I always go back to is make sure if you ever are developing one of these programs, make sure that it is in line with what will be followed through with from the upper management. So if the upper management's not willing to fork over the 20 bucks or the swag every month, that's fine. Stay within those boundaries of what they're willing to follow through on and build the program around that.
So another factor that we often encourage people is ask your workforce, like, "What would be valuable to you?" If a company has a safety committee built from members of the workforce, then that's a great question to pose to those council members is, "Would you find value in a gift card to a local restaurant? Would you find value in swag and some company gear or are you just want the recognition? Would you like some money?" Ask them what they would find incentivizing and kind of go with that. It'll be very different depending on your workforce and the culture that you have already that you're starting with.
Mike Jernigan:
I hear a lot of times, maybe some of the more cynical approaches like, "Well, look, you're getting paid to do this job and that ought to be compensation enough." But you have to remember we're all human and when someone acknowledges that not only have you fulfilled your role, but you've done a good job and you've maybe even gone above and beyond, that's important for people to hear. And I think that that human element is just something that you can't really overlook.
Jason Lake:
Absolutely. And I personally don't have a problem with that argument, but so one of the things that the Loss Control Advisory Council did with this document that we put together was they gave examples of specific safety program elements that could be or should be part of the employee's job description. Right? Say that might be wearing your prescribed PPE, all right? That is part of your job description.
What you would be trying to incentivize and reward are people going above and beyond what their specific role job description calls for as far as participation in the safety program. That's what you're trying to incentivize. So that might look different from a supervisor to an employee, right? What's required of a supervisor as far as their participation in the safety program has a higher degree of involvement than the employee does.
So the supervisor would have to go above and beyond their own requirements to get that recognition. And it does take a little bit more deliberation and a little bit more intention behind setting up the program. But again, me personally, I don't have any problem with that argument. My counter to that would be, be very clear about what their job description calls for as far as their involvement, and then find ways to recognize when they go above and beyond that.
Mike Jernigan:
You just talked about this briefly, and I want to maybe dive a little bit deeper into it. Talk about that leadership in an organization. How important is it that leadership buys into these incentive programs?
Jason Lake:
It's absolutely critical for a lot of reasons. One, employees instinctively and supervisors as well, they're always going to defer to the behavior that they believe will get them their paycheck, right? They want to stay employed. So if the management's message is always, "Production, production, production, get this out quickly," that's what they're going to prioritize. If they're getting a consistent message and support from upper management, that "The safety element is our priority. It is crucial. It is a part of what we're looking at to gauge success," then they will start to prioritize that in their work as well.
And again, I mentioned the word consistency before, and that's, again, it's very critical to be consistent, to have that consistent messaging. So one thing that we mentioned again in the document that the Advisory Council put together was the idea of having a champion in upper management. So if you have your management suite, right? So pick one person that's passionate about this, that has authority, that can make decisions at a company or a management level and have them be the, I guess, arbiter of final rulings when it comes to this program.
That way, whoever's doing the day-to-day administration, if they're getting any pushback from other elements of the management, they can go to that champion and say, "Hey, look, we're having some friction here. We need your clout. We need some backup." And then that champion can step in and help out with solving those disputes. But it's a kind of a convoluted way to say you cannot have success with any of these programs without the upper management backing. Again, if we go back to the... If you do have an incentive side of it, that takes funding. So somebody needs to give you a budget. That's going to come from management. So even just from that basic element, you're going to have to have the support from upper management.
Mike Jernigan:
So what I'm hearing is that consistency with the programs is key, but then collaboration, specifically with your leadership team.
Jason Lake:
Absolutely.
Mike Jernigan:
Right. And within the answer that you just provided, again, you sort of touched on the next question and you speak to some of those challenges, right? Like there may be budgetary constraints or there may be other issues in terms of how you get things rolling. What are some of those challenges? Say we are trying to speak to leadership and say, "Hey, look, we think that this incentive program may help with our safety culture here," but what are the anticipated challenges that you can alert leadership to and then help mitigate those?
Jason Lake:
So one of the early ones is, right? Again, it depends on what you're incentivizing and how you structure the program. But one of the really early ones is just what we call pencil whipping. So if say you are trying to incentivize near misreporting, and so you say all the supervisors have to submit at least five near miss reports a month, and if you submit 10, then you have an incentive behind that, right? For the people going above and beyond. Well, you run the risk of having some very substandard submissions for people just trying to fill out the form to get their quota, to get that filed, basically.
Same thing can happen with programs like job safety analysis or JSAs where people just start going through the motions and they're just pencil whipping these forms and getting them filled out. So that's a concern. One of the concerns that was brought up as we were developing this recommendation letter was, so some safety incentive programs will use markers like tokens or like coins as a way for somebody to recognize somebody on the spot, say, "Hey, I see what you're doing. You're doing a great job. Here's this token. Hang on to that." And then if they collect enough of them, they might be able to buy some swag from the shop or something like that. Right? It's a really quick and easy way to give recognition.
And as a side tangent, one of the things to keep in mind is the more immediate and specific your recognition can be, the more effective it is to direct behavior. So that's one of the reasons why that token program is so effective is because it's immediate and it's specific to what they're doing. All right? Well, we had the rather amusing note that somebody at their workforce, they kind of inadvertently created a black market for these coins where people who are actually being safe were trading them off to people who wanted the coins to get some, whatever the reward was. And so they were kind of like underhand ... I don't know if they're selling them or exchanging them for something else, but yeah.
Mike Jernigan:
We have some creative entrepreneurs.
Jason Lake:
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Jernigan:
Out there on the yard. Yeah.
Jason Lake:
So you can run into a situation where it's like if the token isn't attributed to that individual, they can kind of be accumulate in one person's pocket.
Mike Jernigan:
So you've got to have a way to track it.
Jason Lake:
Yeah. Another pitfall that I see, one of the things that people try to incentivize is recommendations for improvement. Okay? And I think that's a great thing to try to incentivize, but, and this goes back to consistency and communication, collaboration, all those keywords that we were kind of touching on earlier. If you don't follow through on those recommendations, you will stop getting them immediately. And the follow through that you give might be, "Thank you for the recommendation.
We looked into it and we're not able to do that right now because of this." That might be your response, but you have to respond to the recommendations. If people feel like they're giving you what they think is a great idea and you're just ignoring them, they will stop giving you ideas. So implement the ones that you can. You can always take the recommendation and twist it to something that is workable, but always respond to recommendations if they're given willingly because you want to encourage that kind of behavior and silence speaks volumes.
Mike Jernigan:
And it doesn't cost anything to acknowledge someone's idea. You don't have to implement it, you don't have to agree with it, you don't have to like it. You can always at least acknowledge that this person is trying to contribute.
Jason Lake:
One thing that you can do is say you have an idea that is a, "We would like to do this, but we can't do it now." Keep it on a running board and go back and touch on it. Give updates. Like, "We're still evaluating this. We still can't do it, again, for X, Y, Z reason, but we're still trying to figure out a way to work something along these lines." It goes a long way to show that the workers are being listened to or whoever gave the recommendation is being heard and that you are taking their recommendation seriously.
Mike Jernigan:
Well, we've talked a lot about these incentive programs, but let's kind of back it up just a little bit. Let's say that there is a company right now that wants to get started. What are some things that you would advise them to do out of the gate to get an incentive program rolling?
Jason Lake:
That's a great question. So right off the bat, there's a couple things that you want to lay the groundwork for. One is clearly define what you want to incentivize. Okay. So you might be able to identify that through looking at your loss trends, looking at recent near misses, whatever feedback you've been collecting, diving through that and say, "Okay, where are our weak points? Where do we want to really target our efforts to try to improve?" That's something that if you are a member of AEU, your loss manager can help you with that.
We have a lot of information from reported claims that we can help direct some of your focus with that. So that's one thing, clearly define what you want to incentivize and also how you're going to measure success. Okay? Two would be make sure that everyone from the top down in your management structure is on board with it. This isn't something that you want to coerce upper management into doing because the first weak chink that they see, they'll shut it down. Right? So you want to make sure that everyone is on board with it from the get go and that you have a champion ready to promote it.
And the third thing I would recommend is really listen to your employees. As you're setting this up, make sure that the recognition is something they want, the incentive is something that they want, and that you have people that are willing to participate. Because let's say you don't do those three things. Say you're targeting the wrong thing that's not going to have the biggest impact, you don't have upper management support, and you're trying to give the employees something that they don't want, it's never going to get off the ground.
Mike Jernigan:
Well, and that was pretty much an answer to my follow-up, is what if there is a company that has a safety incentive program that's not working and you just spoke to that.
Jason Lake:
Yeah. And but it would also... What I would say is it's also the answer if you have resounding success. So say, let's just, for sake of argument, let's just say you had a bunch of people who were misusing ladders. Right? And you wanted to make people use ladders correctly and select the right ladder. So you have this huge incentive program around, built around that. And after six months you're looking around, it's like, "Wow, everyone's using ladders correctly. This is great." Now the, kind of point of the safety incentive program is gone.
There's nothing wrong with reevaluating and selecting a different target, right? You can always pivot. So the same thing happens if you're not having success with participation in the safety program, right? Pivot, do the reevaluation, go back to those three fundamentals, get alignment, get a target, and then get support from the ground up as far as participation. So you can always pause what you're doing either because of success or because of a lack of success and kind of redirect your efforts.
Mike Jernigan:
And I think it's important to also remind everyone why we are talking about safety incentive programs, because the goal is to make certain that no one's getting hurt. I mean, that's our primary objective. And this is just one tool that we are trying to encourage people to potentially utilize if it's right for them to help keep their team safe.
Jason Lake:
Absolutely. And one of the goals or the byproducts of the safety incentive program is to ingrain the safe practices into the mindset and the approach to their work at the employee level. So what that does is it takes the safety staff out of the role of imposing a safety program and it develops a culture that everyone is a part of the safety program.
Everyone is participating, everyone's giving recommendations, everyone's looking out for their coworkers, and that at the end of the day, will lead to better production. It'll lead to a happier workforce, more effective workforce. And that is the end goal, right? Is to get the safe practices at the ground level, ingrained in their practices and ingrained in their mindset as they approach their work.
Mike Jernigan:
I think that is a great place to sort of wrap up our conversation about safety incentive programs. But I also have to ask one last question, and I ask this to all of our loss control managers. As a safety expert, with your experience and all the time you've had and everything that you've seen in the field, what is one thing about safety that you wish more people understood?
Jason Lake:
Well, as we were talking earlier, I'm a very, very new dad and so-
Mike Jernigan:
Congratulations, by the way.
Jason Lake:
Yeah. So my why has changed drastically. And I would say that what I wish more people understood about safety practices and safety in general in the workplace is the why behind it. This isn't something that somebody's trying to impose on you. This isn't a nuisance that somebody wants to make your job harder. We're trying to make sure that you can go home to whatever is more important to you than your job. Your job is just that. It's a way to keep the good parts of your life going. And if what happens to you at your job interferes with that good stuff at home, it wasn't worth it.
Mike Jernigan:
That's great. That's great information. And it's something that people should not just hear, but internalize because safety is more than just word, it's more than just these podcasts, it's more than just a program. Truthfully, it's about people, it's connecting with people, and it's making sure that you understand that you're trying to establish relationships and you're trying to keep people safe and make them feel safe too. So thank you very much.
Jason Lake:
Thank you, Mike.
Mike Jernigan:
And thank you to all of our listeners for joining us on the Longshore Insider Podcast. You can watch this episode and more on the American Equity Underwriters YouTube page. Also, be sure to subscribe to the Longshore Insider Podcast on your favorite podcast platform and check out even more Longshore Insider content on our website, amequity.com. Until next time, stay safe and take care.