I’m a safety director in interstate highways operations. With have a good size fleet and crew team. Before I joined the company, there was no safety individual or any safety programs in place. I was hired a few months ago to set all of this up and lead the safety program as we have exploded to do work in multiple states.

As of right now we are roughly 150 employees and growing. I recently asked what my budget is for safety as well as what money is available to me for incentives. The answer I received was to come up with a number and let them know.

As far as incentives go, roughly what would be an acceptable allowance/incentive per employee? My thought is, if x employee is producing well, no safety violations, follows our safety guidelines, I would like to reward them with perks like safety gear, better equipment, gift cards etc. I was thinking starting at possibly $100 per year for now but was curious as to how to approach this.

The other side is how much money should I ask for safety? I was told when I started they had set aside $10K. Things like certification courses, safety courses, and possibly safety software would come out of this budget. However, now they are asking me for a given number. In my past experiences I’ve had budgets already in place and it made it easier so not sure how to approach this?

TIA yall!