Do Safety Programs Hinder Productivity?

You can drive profitability by investing in keeping your workers accident free.  Safety programs can actually drive productivity, not the opposite as many have said for years.

We remember listening to safety professionals complain about how executives were more focused on productivity and profits. No matter the information that would not seem to support that tenant, the relationship between safety and productivity remains contentious in many companies.

There are still too many companies and too many working cultures that view safety training, and other safety practices designed to keep workers healthy and safe as productivity bottlenecks.  Remember the adage…”no one gets paid for not having accidents, they get paid for producing goods.”

Safety professionals know that injured workers don't produce anything. More importantly they know that workers afraid of having an accident produce less. From the safety profession view, safety doesn't stand in the way of productivity it is productivity.

A couple years ago there was data presented at the Safety Leadership Conference by Steve Ludwig of Rockwell Automat and data encompassed information from Rockwell’s Safety Maturity Index that measured manufacturing performance in three fields, safety culture, compliance and technology’s.

This data provided the following definitive relationship between safety and productivity:

Best-in-class companies—those ranking in the top 20 percent of aggregate performance scores on the index — recorded impressive efficiency rates – 90 percent OEE and just 2 percent unscheduled downtime.

While achieving best-in-class efficiency, these top companies also achieved an injury frequency rate of just 0.05 percent – about 18 times lower than the average companies and 60 times lower than laggards.

This relationship continues down the line: Better productivity, better safety; better safety, better productivity.

 "It's true that no one gets paid for not having accidents," Ludwig said. "But if we can reduce injury rate by half, then we can also increase both overall equipment effectiveness and unscheduled downtime."

In other words, you can use safety as a productivity driver.  You can drive increase profitability by investing in keeping your workers safe. 

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

When Safety Slogans and Signs Can be Harmful.

Do the signs that track the number of days without an accident really encourage safe work performance?

They’ve been around for years, and can’t do any harm.  Right?  They are important because they clearly depict the company’s safety objective.  Right?  This is meaningful and motivational information.  Right?

We respectfully disagree that any of the above statements are true!  These signs can be harmful.  They merely communicate the fact that the plant has not had an injury, but do nothing about teaching the meaning of safe practices.  They do reinforce the goal we all have of no accidents, but frankly any system that focuses on that goal alone is  flawed and will unintentionally reward luck. 

When your culture rewards only the decrease of accidents, you will encourage employees not to report incidents which can lead to other problems that can be worse than the accident.  This may also result in unsafe and unethical behavior.  In addition, in this type of culture employees often fail to report safety issues because they fear negative fallout from management.

This type of communication does not motivate improved safety performance or to develop sound safe behaviors to produce lasting change.  If you want to motivate change, design your safety effort around the behaviors that when performed in a safe manner will accumulatively result in a decrease of incidents. 

When you use compliance signs that promote specific behaviors, and then reward your employees for displaying those behaviors you can and will build safe work habits in your organization. 

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

On the Spot Safety Awards?

There are still many EHS managers that think they shouldn't have to reward workers to behave safely on the job.   Frankly safety managers have valid reasons to think this way. Traditional safety programs of the past that awarded employees with poor safety habits, just because they were lucky enough hot to have an accident during the program period, were poorly designed programs. Safety and operation managers were tired of spending their money and not getting sustained safety behavior.  They still are.

But safety incentive programs are changing their focus, and changing for the better.   When viewing safety incentives through the proven science of behavior modification, it’s hard to disagree with using awards to recognize safe performance. They become the positive consequence that turns the behavior change into a habit.

When you want to improve safety performance, offer rewards that are consistently and continuously used to reinforce the safe behaviors you are seeking. And you don’t need that reward to be expensive.  As we've told clients for years, a safety award initiative should be about changing behaviors on the journey, not waiting until you get to the destination.

On The Spot, an award system that was recently introduced and already has dozens of companies using it, is an award system that safety professionals use to motivate the steps to safety rather than just the end results. 

The  program was designed in such a way that allows you to thank employees often with tangible positive reinforcement with little or no attendant cost.  You easily manage your budget and have a highly motivational award that your employees will love.  And it is very easy to administer.

If you would like a brief paper that will tell you about On The Spot and how it can help you reduce incidents and at the same time creates safe behaviors that turn into habits, let us know.

Measurements that Correlate to Successful Safety Performance

Tracking performance is critical to continual improvement and success but, in the area of safety, many organizations have struggled to identify measurements that have a strong correlation to successful performance.

Many companies make the mistake of relying exclusively on lagging indicators, such as incident rates, lost or restricted workdays, or Workers’ Compensation costs. Although these can be useful with respect to benchmarking within similar industries, they only provide a retrospective view of your safety program performance.

A better practice is to incorporate leading indicators—which identify, track, measure, and correct the factors that have a strong correlation with potential accidents—into your overall safety metrics strategy. The goal is to use this information to identify causal factors in an accident and take preventative measures to correct them. This strategy is also an excellent opportunity to increase your overall employee participation in your safety program

·        Identify trailing (lagging) and leading measures and metrics and use them in an effective way

·        Select EHS measures that drive high performance safety management success for your company or at specific facilities

·        Create the right balance in your safety performance measurement between leading and lagging measures

·        Incorporate benchmarking considerations in your EHS measurement systems

·        Use audit results as a key measure of safety performance improvement

·        Track key EHS metrics—and why those EHS measures could have the greatest impact on your company’s safety and health program!

·        Use measures to motivate, drive performance, and foster continuous improvement

·        Objectively maximize the use of leading safety measures

·        Embrace the qualitative value of EHS measures—and why safety professionals must resist pressures to avoid them

·        Effectively—and successfully—communicate EHS performance factors with CEOs, CFOs, COOs, and the board of directors to increase leadership buy-in and supervisory accountability

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net