Page 89 - Occupational Health & Safety, September 2017

recognition, and rewards determine how safety-related behavior is valued. The disciplinary policies define which behaviors must be corrected and which ones won’t be tolerated. The desired behaviors should be clear for office and driver personnel.
Below are a couple of questions that can help engage drivers in the effort to improve the safety culture:
1. How do you describe our safety culture? Hopefully, they won’t say things like “You just do what you’re told,” or “They just care about the stuff in the trailer.” It is valuable, either way, to hear what is on their minds.
2. What one change would you make to improve our safety cul- ture? Hopefully, they feel free to share their wisdom.
Strong safety cultures attract, retain, and reward safe drivers; conversely, cultures that allow unsafe or illegal operations attract less safe drivers. In other words, your culture can be a competitive advantage.
A safety reward system should reinforce safe behaviors to create safe habits and incentivize people to correct quickly or proactively avoid safety issues. ELDs can provide much, but not all, of the data needed to indicate when drivers are operating outside of safe parameters. Re- ports can also provide which dispatchers are proactive in using pro- jected hours available to avoid service issues. Reward and recognition program costs are controllable. However, no one can state with cer- tainty the costs and consequences of allowing unsafe habits to persist.
In conclusion, the five-step journey to adapt your safety culture to electronic logs can provide a framework within which you can improve your current efforts or use them as a guide for an “extreme makeover.” Carrier leadership, customer service, dispatchers, driv- ers, maintenance, and safety personnel must be aligned and work as a team. The vision should be to transform the organization to a culture of shared values—a culture that people will not want to leave.
Mark Schedler, Senior Editor for J. J. Keller and Associates, Inc., has more than 25 years of experience in the transportation indus- try, spanning operations, customer service, planning, logistics and finance. His primary areas of expertise include driver operations and safety, driver retention, driver pay best practices, hours of service, ELD requirements and reasonable suspicion training.
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