| September 2000 |
“In the past, every ORNL employee received a safety award. It did not matter if the employees had good or poor safety performance; everyone received an award. That has changed,” says Carol.
Under the new plan, each directorate has received an amount of safety award program money, allotted on a per capita basis. Line management will use the money to distribute, on the spot, awards to those employees they deem as having performed outstandingly in the area of safety.
Awards could be as much as $500 to $1,000.
Carol says that line management will now have a tool to motivate staff to consider integrated safety management as part of the job process.
“The benefits of this safety award program are that it gives line management the authority and ability to instantly recognize safety performance, and it puts motivation back into the safety award process by encouraging positive safety performance behavior,” Carol says.
Adds Associate Lab Director for ESH&Q Kelly Beierschmitt, “We want to see people working safely, and incentives reinforce that behavior.”
The new Leadership Team-approved program, now under way, applies to non-exempt and exempt staff. ORNL hourly staff members will continue to receive a gift certificate.
New safety awards campaign hails, rewards working safely ‘on the spot’
ORNL is taking a different approach to safety awards this year. Whereas in the past awards have been distributed pretty much uniformly, the Environment, Safety, Health and Quality directorate has put into place a plan that puts award money at the individual directorate’s discretion. The object, says Operational Safety Services Director Carol Scott, is to instantly reward outstanding safety performance.