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All About You: Recognize safety efforts and successes

March 23, 2025

EDITOR’S NOTE: Motivating employees to work safely is part of the safety professional’s job. But who motivates the motivator? In this monthly column, veteran safety pro and professional speaker Richard Hawk offers his entertaining brand of wisdom to inspire safety pros to perform at their best.

Recognition is an effective tool for rewarding workers’ safety and health efforts. I’ve used it many times in a wide variety of situations.

Consider how many fields – entertainment (the Oscars and Golden Globes), sports (halls of fame) and, of course, safety – recognize achievements. (I checked out the National Safety Council’s awards and found several, including the Green Cross for Safety, the Robert W. Campbell Award and the Rising Stars of Safety.)

Positive recognition feels good. It causes a release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter linked to pleasure and reward. It also stimulates the desire to repeat the positive behavior that earned you the recognition. So, if you recognize someone for going out of their way to remove a hazard, the person (as well as their co-workers who witness the recognition) will be more likely to repeat the positive behavior.

Most organizations have formal safety recognition programs. I’ve championed several during my career. But here are some less-formal ways you can give recognition to anyone – both on and off the job.

Ask: ‘Have you done anything you’re proud of lately?’

One of my favorite gigs, which I got shortly after resigning as a full-time safety professional and starting my consulting and speaking career, was right back at the site I had left. Only this time I was commissioned to help improve communication among the departments and between the union and management. It wasn’t an easy task but, working together with another seasoned consultant named Nancy, we were able to make a significant contribution.

We came up with the idea of creating a weekly flyer that we posted in different places and had copies in the breakrooms and cafeteria. Called “Focus on Five,” it included five positive things that employees or departments had recently accomplished. Nancy and I would spend half our day going around and asking everyone we met if there was anything they did recently that they were proud of or that was a success. At first it was difficult to get detailed responses but, after a couple of weeks, we got more success stories than we needed.

What made this campaign popular was the recognition on the flyer – but also the fact that we were asking employees about what they were doing. That is an informal, but powerful, form of recognition. We talked with everybody from security personnel to the plant manager. Now when I’m at a worksite as a safety pro, I do the same thing – “ask around” about what successes people are having.

Show recognition during safety meetings

Whenever I give a keynote or host a seminar or weekly safety meeting, I make sure to recognize attendees. If I’m talking to an organization or company, I’ll write a song or create a test that’s unique to the group. For example, I wore a carnival barker costume and wrote “Step right up!”-type banter to start and end my talk for a convention with the theme “Cirque du Safety: The Safest Show on Earth.”

If I saw a crew that set up a work area perfectly (including doing a bang-up job of cleaning up), I’d ask the crew members to come to the front of the room during a safety meeting so I could give each of them a prize – usually something humorous like bacon-scented soap or a finger puppet. The prize didn’t matter much, but the recognition did.

During meetings, recognize suggestions you get from employees. This may require some finesse if you don’t intend to use the idea. You don’t want anyone to feel insulted, and you’ll also want to keep emphasizing how important it is for people to share ideas. (Sometimes I’ll just thank the person for their suggestion without describing what it was.)

Recognition comes in myriad forms, but it’s something we all desire. Done well, it’s an effective way to make people feel appreciated and influence them to work safely.

This article represents the views of the author and should not be considered a National Safety Council endorsement.

Richard Hawk helps leaders inspire employees to care more about their safety and health so “nobody gets hurt.” He also has a long history of success getting safety leaders to increase their influence and make safety fun. For more than 35 years, Richard’s safety keynotes, training sessions and books have made a positive difference in the safety and health field. Learn more about how Richard can improve your employees’ safety performance at makesafetyfun.com.