Red Card / Yellow Card Safety Program 

Quick Conversations. Big Impact.

StartKleen’s red card/yellow card program is a coaching-based safety system modeled after soccer’s penalty system. A yellow card triggers a two-minute coaching conversation about an unsafe behavior. A red card removes the employee from the floor for a 15-minute conversation about a high-risk behavior that could cause serious injury. Every card is logged in an app and reviewed by the Safety Director to spot trends before someone gets hurt.

StartKleen Start Safe

StartKleen launched the program in 2023 to increase reports of near misses. In the first six months of 2024, fewer than a dozen near misses had been written up across more than 1,000 employees working third shift in food-processing environments. But after the red card/yellow card system rolled out, near-miss reports jumped to roughly 300 in the first month, and serious injuries dropped over the following 12 months.

How the Red Card/Yellow Card Program Works

The red card/yellow card program is StartKleen’s frontline safety coaching system. Every manager carries a yellow card and a red card in their back pocket. When a manager observes an employee doing something unsafe, they physically pull the card, stop the work, and have a structured conversation. The card is then logged digitally so the safety team can track patterns across plants and people.

The program is intended as a coaching tool. The premise is borrowed from soccer: a yellow card is a warning paired with a quick correction, and a red card is reserved for the kind of behavior that could end in a catastrophic injury. Both are designed to get a manager and an employee to stop, talk, and document every time.

The Yellow Card Process 

A yellow card is pulled when an employee is observed engaging in an unsafe act or behavior, something that’s against the rules but hasn’t yet resulted in injury. The point is to interrupt the behavior immediately and coach the employee in real time.

  1. Stop the employee from their work.
  2. Move to a space where you and the employee can have a private conversation. 
  3. The conversation should not last about  2-minutes. Here is where the  employee will answer the four yellow card questions.
  4. After the conversation, the employee can return directly back to work. At this point you’ll get a digital Yellow Card in the safety app.

StartKleen's Safefy Program - yellow card

StartKleen's Safefy Program - Red card

The Red Card Process

A red card is pulled when an employee is observed engaging in a highly unsafe act or behavior that could have catastrophic outcomes, the kind of action that could cause a serious injury or death if it continued. A manager can also escalate directly to a red card if the offense is severe enough; an employee doesn’t have to receive a yellow card first.

  1. Stop the employee from their work.
  2. Send the employee to the break room.
  3. Assign coverage to the employee’s area and complete any tasks needed to be away from the floor.
  4. If you are not the employee’s supervisor, find their direct supervisor and invite them to join.
  5. Have the employee answer the four red card questions.
  6. Conduct a 15-minute discussion and share the relevant safety training for the hazard.
  7. At the end of the shift, the employee explains the learning points and a plan for changed behavior to the manager.
  8. The manager fills out a digital Red Card Warning in the safety app.

Every Card is Logged and Reviewed

Every yellow and red card is entered into an app on the manager’s phone. The manager records the employee’s name and ID, the four answers, and submits it. StartKleen’s Safety Director receives a report from every card across every plant.

That visibility is the whole point. The Safety Director can see who is getting cards, which plants are generating them, and who the repeat offenders are. If a pattern starts to look dangerous, she can call the regional or area manager directly and have them visit the plant before the behavior turns into an injury.

Why StartKleen Built the Program

StartKleen built the red card/yellow card system because near-miss reporting was sporadic. Across more than 1,000 employees working in hazardous environments, only 11 near misses were written up in the first six months of 2024, despite years of management pushing for them. OSHA data and decades of industrial safety research show a strong correlation between near-miss reporting and reduced serious injuries. If you don’t catch the close calls, you can’t prevent the real ones.

The cards solved that. In the first month of the program, managers logged roughly 300 near-miss-style incidents through the cards. Over the next 12 months, the volume of employees grew, the total number of incidents stayed roughly flat, but the severity of injuries dropped, fewer serious recordables, more minor bumps and bruises that got handled with first aid.

Recognized Engagement That Satisfies OSHA

The red card/yellow card program satisfies OSHA’s expectation that an employer demonstrates active employee engagement on safety. The first time StartKleen presented the program at an OSHA hearing, the inspector dropped two serious violations and reduced the associated fines by roughly half, citing the program as evidence the company was working on the right things. StartKleen’s outside OSHA counsel described the program as a model worth marketing publicly.

A Coaching System

The program is explicitly framed as coaching. StartKleen’s leadership communicates to managers and employees that the cards exist because managers care more about an employee’s safety than about avoiding an uncomfortable conversation. The cards force the conversation to happen every time, the same way, with the same four questions. This allows unsafe behavior to get corrected before it turns into an injury.

The program is designed to give every employee a clear, documented chance to change. The structured conversation, the four questions, and the logged record mean unsafe behavior gets addressed in real time, and the data lets the Safety Director step in before a pattern turns into an injury.