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Thursday, October 25, 2012
Get in the Game: Applying Gamification to On-the-Job Safety
Occupational Health & Safety: It isn't easy to put a price on a worker's health and safety, but if we had to, it would be this: $1 billion. That is the amount U.S. employers pay every week in direct workers' compensation alone, according to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. With a sum like that, one can say workers' safety is a prized commodity.
This seems a little strange...as in: safety should never be taken lightly. But I have always found an element of competition or a prize at the end a good way of making people hyper-conscious of what they are doing. So if you extrapolate that theory, then this is a really cool idea. I'm sure it works wonderful. A couple hundred-hundred dollar prizes must be a huge savings for these companies.
ReplyDeleteI think it's really unfortunate that employers need to bribe their employees to protect themselves. That being said, since they clearly do, this is a great way of doing it. I've had this "gamification" at work before... not for safety reasons, but as a selling incentive when I was a waitress. If you served the most of a certain meal that night, you got a free meal, or you got entered into a larger raffle. People get extremely competitive. Even if the prize isn't that great, people are bound to just want to beat their coworkers, so I think these games are a great way to encourage safe behavior.
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