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

Does Your Executive Management Prioritize Productivity Over Safety?

A recent survey by the National Safety Council found that 58% of workers in the construction industry feel that safety takes a backseat to production in completing job tasks.  In addition, 51% report that management does only the minimum required by law to keep employees safe, and 47 percent say employees are afraid to report unsafe working conditions.

4,836 people died in workplace incidents in 2015, and 937 of those killed were construction workers.  With all that has been said and done by OSHA to make sure that workers feel secure in reporting unsafe behaviors, the 47%, or any % for that matter, should be very disturbing. 

In contrast to the construction industry the report showed that only 36% of those employees

surveyed in fourteen other industries felt that their employers prioritize productivity over safety.  Nonetheless, 36% is overwhelming when you consider the comparison of choosing productivity to drive bottom line profits to potentially serious accidents or even death.  Obviously one doesn’t necessarily cause the other, but the potential is clearly higher when the concentration is on productivity.

As we spend most of our working day consulting with safety professionals about programs to reduce unsafe behavior and report unsafe conditions, our first impression was to question the above numbers.  We can’t remember the last time a safety professional told us that his executive management was more concerned about profits than safety, at least not to the extent of 50%!  Only you can speak for your own operation.

Other questions and responses from the survey that may be of interest include:

32% say management ignores safety performance when determining promotions.

62% feel that everyone is involved in solving job safety issues.

63% feel hey work in areas ergonomically correct.

48% believe safety meetings are held less often than they should be.

47% believe performance standards are higher for productivity than for safety 

33% do not feel that management has a written policy expressing attitudes about employee safety.

One thing is for sure, before you embark on any program to motivate safe behavior you might want to survey your own employees on some of these questions.  The results will certainly help you when you begin to design your own safety award system.

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