What Motivates You To Work Safe?
Most employees can produce a quick answer to the question: "Why do you work?” The answer typically includes something that gets employees to show up to work on a regular basis, a paycheck for example. When asked: "Why do you work safely?” the responses are a bit more labored or indecisive.
Your Motivation
What is your motivation for coming to work each day? Why do you come to work? Sure, a paycheck, but what do you do with that paycheck? What is something that you enjoy doing? What drives you to work safe and ensure you come home?
Do you work safe because you want to provide for your family? Do you work safe because you want to have fun doing things in your personal time? Do you travel? Do you want to enjoy family vacations? Do you want to go home to teach your children how to play sports and see them grow up?
By working safely and being aware of both my own and my co-workers' safety, I am doing what I can to ensure that my actions on the job do not negatively affect my ability to go home the way I came to work.
What about Injuries?
So how can injury impact your activities? How would that make you feel, to not be able to see your children because of an eye injury? How would it feel to not be able to play sports the same anymore because of a bad leg injury? Wouldn't the effort to avoid that negative outcome be a motivator to work safely?
The next people to suffer are your friends and family. Your loved ones suffer from watching you go through physical and/or emotional pain. They worry about you when something first happens to you. Your family may suffer financially from loss of income. Your kids can suffer from worrying about you and feel let down to no longer be able go camping or hiking, or to kick the ball around with you on the weekends.
In the event of a more serious incident like a brain injury or paralysis they may need to care for you. Your partner may need to leave their job to look after putting you under financial strain. Sure, you might receive compensation, but often that will not equate to the higher amounts of lost income, plus if you weren’t following the safety procedures put in place by your employer, you yourself might be found liable.
And what if you died? Think of the suffering that would cause your nearest and dearest. Last year 186 people were killed at work. These are not just statistics, these are actual people just like you, who went to work in the morning to do the same job they do every other day and had no idea that they would not be coming home at the end of the workday.
When you go to work tomorrow, don’t put on that safety glasses or follow that safety procedure because your safety manager asked you to, or because your company has gone so many days without an incident, and you don’t want to be the guy to mess it up.
Put on those safety glasses for yourself and for your family. Pull on those work gloves because you like going golfing or fishing on the weekends or playing with your kids. Put on that face shield because you like having a job and providing for your family. And follow those safety procedures because you value and respect your coworkers and do not want to cause them harm.
Indeed, staying healthy and getting home safely at the end of each workday should be your only motivation, and having two eyes that see, two ears that hear, two working arms and ten wiggling toes, should be the greatest possible reward!