Page 86 - Occupational Health & Safety, September 2017

TRANSPORTATION SAFETY
5. Use recognition and rewards to sustain change.
1. Obtain leadership buy-in of the new vision. The first step of the cultural transition is to define your vision of the new safety culture. The attitudes, values, and beliefs of top leadership are the inertia behind your company’s safety culture. If the current cul- ture collides with the reality of using electronic logs, your vision must be redefined and realigned to prioritize safety and compliance ahead of service and productivity. The potential conflicts must be addressed openly and honestly with leadership—before the drivers are using electronic logs.
The unwritten guidelines by which employees make decisions are a critical part of the culture. Previously acceptable behaviors that created unnecessary safety risks to avoid consequences from leadership must be changed.
Collaboration with the executive team is imperative to obtain buy-in of your vision. Leaders should reinforce the new vision in their communication with all employees during inquisitions re- garding load failures, as well as company-wide business updates. Leadership will reinforce expectations of “acceptable” behavior when the old values and newly clarified values are at odds, such as when there is a choice to ask a driver to run or to tell a fatigued or low-hours driver to shut down.
2. Develop clear policies and procedures. Acceptable and un- acceptable behaviors must be defined in easy-to-understand poli- cies and procedures that outline expectations and consequences.
Reinforcement of desired behavior occurs through not only the restatement of the policies, but also helping people understand clearly where leadership “draws the line.”
If the priorities and values are going to change, uncertainty will likely result. Policies must provide clarity. Dispatch personnel need to know how to handle situations such as drivers running out of hours under a hot load, options and limits to save loads, or how to address an irate customer when a just-in-time load will be late. Drivers cannot be caught in the middle of a service crisis and a safety value dilemma. There are likely many policies and proce- dures in place that need a slight adaptation to the inflexible reality of electronic logging.
Do your policies and procedures promote a safety culture in conjunction with the ELD implementation? The following check- list can be used to assess for major gaps in transitioning to ELDs. Your ELD policies and procedures should, at a minimum:
4 Require initial and refresher training of policies and procedures.
4 Align policies, procedures, and the safety culture across all company facilities.
4 Require initial training to demonstrate an understanding of hours-of-service regulations, ELD use, malfunction procedures, and data transfer to enforcement.
4 Require dispatching and operating within available ELD- calculated hours of service and adherence to all Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations.
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