Industry Case Study: Applying Positive Reinforcement Effectively

In our February article, I described the importance of focusing on the positives to get positive results. In essence, if you look for the good things people are doing and let them know that you like it when they do that, they will be more likely to continue doing it. So, if we want our employees to value safety, we must make it valuable by recognizing safe behavior when it occurs. If we ignore it as a condition of employment and praise production or some other aspect of our employees’ performance, then it will always take a back seat to that which we are praising.

Praise is a social consequence that is very powerful in settings where employees feel they are generally paid a fair wage for their work. When it produces and increase in the behaviors that produce it, praise can be said to be a reinforcer. This month I want to describe a successful application of positive reinforcement that builds on the basic concept of praise. It is a process that avoids the common errors of delivering positive reinforcement in that the consequence can be delivered immediately after the behavior occurs (or while it is occurring—recall we need to create a dependency between the behavior and the consequence), can be delivered with a high enough frequency to be relatively certain, and will have significance to the employees who earn it. Finally, it can be put in the hands of the front-line employees and managed at peer-on-peer level. The reinforcer to which I am referring is a Thank You Card, backed-up with a formal letter of appreciation placed in the employee file.

A large outdoor facility with whom I work had been making behavioral observations (see October and November newsletter articles for a review) for a few weeks and had identified safe driving as a target for performance improvement. The team of hourly employees steering the process decided to activate safe driving with an information and poster campaign and subsequently to reinforce safe driving (e.g., safe speed, use of turn-signals, use of appropriate horn-signals when driving on site, complete stops, use of day time running lights, and safety-belt use, etc.) when it was observed. The reinforcer selected was a “formal thank you,” a process I had researched and identified as effective when I was a graduate student at Virginia Tech (contact me if you would like a copy of the published research report documenting this early study).

The thank you card used at the facility being described was designed to include a list of each of the driving targets that could be checked-off. As a result, each recipient knew exactly what he or she had done to earn the thank you. Specifically, during the course of an observation, if safe driving was observed, the observer approached the driver as soon as possible and handed them the Thank You Card, noting the safe behaviors observed. (Please note, a lot of driving occurred at this facility. Observers did not pull drivers over when the car was in motion, but either signaled via radio to a guard shack at the gates where the vehicle would have to stop, or if they were following the safe driver in their own vehicle at another destination upon arrival—e.g., a parking lot. Thus, neither drivers nor observers were inconvenienced).

The unique characteristic of this “thank you” program was that receipt of 5 Thank You Cards resulted in a safe driver badge that the recipient could where on their uniform or display in their vehicle. Furthermore, 10 Thank You Cards triggered a formal letter of appreciation and a certificate signed by the facility general manager. The letter of appreciation was sent to the employees home and copied to the employee file. Finally, it was considered as “extra-credit” during regular performance reviews. In essence, it served as the positive counterpart to a formal written reprimand.

The Thank You Card process became known, in a playful way, as the “backseat driver program” and was generally embraced by employees. It was successful in getting employees talking more about safe driving, communicating to each other when things could be improved (immediate correction) and, as importantly, when safe driving was observed (immediate positive reinforcement). It increased the safe driving behaviors being targeted and as a result, during the course of the program, no driving related injuries occurred. Moreover, property damage costs in this fleet of light trucks were reduced by a factor of 10 (i.e., from approximately $2500 per month to less than $250 per month).

To summarize, positive reinforcement works when it can be applied frequently and immediately after the behavior you want to increase. Involving employees in creating a program that they can manage will make this possible. Moreover, positive reinforcement doesn’t have to cost much. In most facilities where employees are paid well, the social positives work best when they are applied correctly. The Thank You Card program described here is an artful application of this concept that capitalized on the positive counterpart to already existing formal policies. We will build on these concepts in our article next month. So, until next time, consider what you can do to make a positive out of some formal policy structure you may have that isn’t producing the results you want.