Posted byHere’s the results (as of 8/19/10) from my unscientific survey of TapRooT® Users:
Never Receive Rewards from Management for a Good Investigation: 76%
Get a Verbal “Atta-Boy/Girl” for Investigations: 20%
Get a Financial Reward for Investigations: 4%
Here’s the actual answers:
http://www.taproot.com/content/2010/08/05/rewards/
I didn’t find these statistics surprising.
I also found it interesting that many of the investigators said that performing a good investigation and seeing people jobs get better (safer) was reward enough.
However, if managers want good investigations, shouldn’t they be rewarding what they want? Isn’t this basic management?
Therefore, one major improvement that management should consider for improving investigations is to start a systematic evaluation of investigations and rewards for good investigations.
What do you think? Is this a good idea?
Let me know by commenting here …
Category: Human Performance, Investigations, Performance Improvement
4 Comments »
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Rewarding good investigations encourages over investigation.
I had a colleague who was head of safety in the project management group of a very large mining company. Ivestigations were never completed because incidents, including HPI’s were downgraded because rewards were tied to incident frequency rates.
Being rewarded for doing what is a part of your task is going to orient behaviour towards achieving that result each & every time with no recourse to objective effective results.
Seeing the workplace become a safer place because of an incident investigation achieved the desired result is reward enough.
Comment by Christopher Giumelli — August 24, 2010 @ 3:12 am
I agree, to many times the management over looks their safety departments and the work they do. If they reward workers,managers and supervisors for doing a good job then why not safety departments? Unfortunately, to many company’s put safety in because it is a contractors requirement and the safety personnel are the one to pick up the pieces after everything else has fallen apart. When it come to investigations I agree there is a reward towards a good investigation but there should be a better reward for trying to prevent incidents in the first place. Too bad to many company’s feels safety is just a cost that they could do without. Not realizing that being proactive is less costly than being reactive.
Regards,
Comment by Trevor — August 24, 2010 @ 9:42 am
From a quality perspective, I would interested in hearing what metrics should be identified and measured to determine if an investigation is good or bad. I ask this input, not for rewards, but to continually improve the manner in which we investigate and report findings.
Comment by Shawna — August 24, 2010 @ 12:49 pm
An important part of any investigation with integrity is avoiding all appearance of impropriety. No matter how good of a reward system I can imagine, rewarding investigators for their investigations will allow the question of impropriety to be raised (no matter how honest or transparent the invesigation or the company actually is). No investigator will be able to avoid the question, “Were these findings influenced in favor of the company by the prospect of a reward?”
The greatest reward an investigator can receive is the company’s full disclosure of a truly independent investigation, complete acceptence of the results, and full support for implementation of the recommended corrective actions.
Comment by Mark W. Keen — September 15, 2010 @ 4:35 pm