It’s easy to say, “safety first,” but if your employees aren’t engaged, it can be much harder for your company to be safe in practice.
Positive reinforcement can be a useful tool for motivating your team to work with safety top of mind. Rather than only reprimanding those who mess up, commend your team members when they recognize safety hazards and identify areas of improvement.
Empower Your Safety Committee
If you have a safety committee that meets monthly, discusses current safety issues in the field and then adjourns, this can quickly become performative rather than productive.
One way to breathe life back into your safety committee is to develop a mission statement. Determine their purpose so each meeting can have better focus.
When your committee has identified the root cause of a set of close calls or another area of improvement, enable them to truly act on this knowledge.
Give them the tools to build trust with the team and sell safety. If they determine additional training is needed for operating a certain piece of equipment, make sure you’re setting aside the time and convey to the rest of the staff that the training is necessary and important.
After implementing certain measures, gauge the effectiveness of your safety committee by measuring metrics like participation, attendance and their ability to address safety issues, hazards and risks. If nothing improves, you might need to consider diversifying your current committee members for a fresh perspective.
Also, don’t forget to show your appreciation to your safety committee members. This is typically an additional responsibility and knowing their efforts are seen and valued can go a long way.
If you don’t already have a safety committee, consider forming one. Having a variety of different perspectives can help pinpoint areas to improve or methods to change for safer working conditions.
Seek Employee Feedback
Aside from your safety committee, you can also seek out feedback from the rest of your workforce. Ask them if they know of any situations where an accident could occur, unsafe practices that are currently happening or where certain safety practices are not being followed.
Sebert Landscape, based in Bartlett, Illinois, empowers employees to think outside of the box and make safety suggestions through their Safe Acts program. Team members can make suggestions on how to be safer and if their ideas are successful, they are rewarded with $200.
Enter For Safety Awards
Employees like being part of a winning team and if you’re looking to boost your employees’ engagement in safety, participating in NALP’s Safety Recognition Awards can give them the acclaim they’re looking for.
The safety award types include:
- Best of the Best (for companies that have received the Overall Safety Achievement Award – Gold for three consecutive years)
- Overall Safety Achievement Award — Gold, Silver, Bronze
- No Vehicle Accidents
- No Injuries or Illnesses
- No Days Away from Work
- Most Improved (for companies who participated the previous years)
If your company is eligible for any of these awards, you will receive award certificates to proudly display, a digital award badge for your website, fleet decals, recognition on NALP’s website and press release announcement, and a press release template to help you share the news.
Additionally, if you enter by Aug. 4, 2025, your company name will be displayed at ELEVATE.
Create A Safety Champion Program
Another way to recognize your employees for safe practices is to develop a safety champion program.
At Environmental Management, Inc. (EMI), based in Plain City, Ohio, field managers nominate employees weekly from each branch’s maintenance and installation divisions who have demonstrated safety excellence. These nominations are voted on at the end of the month.
The employees with the highest rating from each department are named the monthly safety champion and each receives a $100 gift card and a certificate of safety excellence.
Monthly winners also get a picture holding a gold wrestling belt with Joe Payne, environmental health and safety associate director for EMI. Their picture gets posted at each of their shops so everyone can see who was the safety champion for the maintenance and installation departments.
“It’s the best way to get safety in front of everyone versus Josh or me or some upper management guy coming up and going, ‘Hey, do this,'” Payne says.
At the end of the year, all the monthly winners have the opportunity to be voted the grand safety champion. The winner receives $1,000 and a glass-encased ring with the year and ‘Grand Safety Champ’ inscribed on it.
Conduct Regular Safety Meetings
Holding regular safety meetings can also help keep safety more front and center for your team. You can cover various topics related to the season and type of work you are currently doing.
Safety meetings also provide an opportunity to highlight any issues your company may be experiencing. Addressing these safety concerns in a group setting can ensure everyone is on the same page and get to the root of the problem.
Don’t be afraid to get creative and make some of your safety meetings fun. Often, a dash of humor can make the information conveyed more memorable. For instance, you could come up with a jingle on the personal protective equipment needed when string trimming, if that is an issue.
Another option is quizzing employees on the safety topic at the end of the meeting. To engage your staff more, incorporate a soccer ball to kick to the employee who has to answer one of the questions. If the employee gets the question right, they can draw for a reward anywhere from $5 to $100.
This can pique your team’s interest and keep them focused on the topic.
