Page 90 - Occupational Health & Safety, July 2017

SAFETY MANAGEMENT
Your Best in Class Safety Program
The C-Team is constantly looking to squeeze more juice from the company lemon. Mitigating your exposure to costly accidents is the proverbial “low hanging fruit.”
BY THOMAS R. KNIGHT
86 Occupational Health & Safety | JULY 2017
www.ohsonline.com
Ihave worked the past 30 years in the property- casualty insurance industry; the first 15 in Claims (cleaning up after accidents) and the last 15 years in Loss Prevention (helping customers prevent
and avoid accidents). I have seen it all: The best loss prevention programs. And the absolute worst, as well. In my experience, Best in Class safety programs tend to have the following elements in common:
1. Every manager in the organization has some “skin in the game” when it comes to the safety results of those they supervise. Absent this, the program never approaches Best in Class. For example, “This year, 25 percent of your performance appraisal will be based on how your team performs safety-wise.” Boom! Now, there is “walk” in the safety “talk.” Safety management, after all, is really nothing more than just good management.
2. Acknowledge and reward those who exceed your safety expectations. If you only reward produc- tion, your front-line managers will talk safety but there will be no walk in the safety talk.
3. While every manager has skin in the game, overall authority for the program’s success should re- side in one manager and not be spread among several.
In my experience, when “everyone” is responsible for safety, no one is. When an organization’s loss experi- ence deteriorates, the CEO needs to be able to look to one manager for an explanation and answers, not six.
4. Every manager should know what the organi- zation’s current workers’ compensation Experience Modification Rating (Mod) is. Literally, your insur- ance rate is modified by your company’s loss experi- ence compared to its industry peers. The Mod is not only a reflection of how a company manages its risk. Today, most of the country’s largest general contrac- tors will not even allow a subcontractor to bid on a job if their Mod is worse than industry average. Every year your company’s Mod exceeds 1.0 means you are paying more than your average industry peer for the same amount of insurance. A weak safety program can prevent you from landing work and is always a profit margin killer.
5. An accident is a red flag that something is not quite right, either with that worker or your pro- cess. Every accident—no matter how minor—must be promptly investigated for root cause. Even near misses should be investigated. If it almost happened, that means it can (and probably will) eventually hap-
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