robintek

Despite common belief, the majority of workplace injuries are not caused by unsafe conditions, but rather employee behavior. These “misbehaving” workers often overestimate their physical limits and make unsafe choices — such as lifting a 300-pound piece of equipment without assistance.

When DuPont conducted a study of all its workplace accidents over a 10-year period, they discovered that 96% of the incidents resulted from employees working beyond their limits. A 2006 Liberty Mutual Workplace Safety Study showed that more than 50% of all workplace injuries were a result of overexertion, falls, twisting the wrong way and other such “behavioral” accidents. These injuries led to an estimated $46 billion in annual worker’s compensation costs.

The OSHA factor

Considering these eye-opening statistics, it’s obvious that workers need an on-the-job attitude adjustment. Some believe the industry should turn to The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) to reverse this disturbing trend. Unfortunately, OSHA might not be the solution. Although the organization has acted as the watchdog for workplace safety for the past 30 years, OSHA generally focuses on making the workplace safer as opposed to changing employee behavior. After all, it’s a lot easier to modify a facility or repair a piece of machinery than it is to change the way a worker thinks and acts. Plus, many employers are wary of opening their doors to OSHA in fear that the organization will become overly involved in their every day affairs.

Taking charge

Because OSHA doesn’t seem to be the answer, it looks like employers are on their own when it comes to changing employee behavior. That means business owners must take the initiative to educate employees and cut down on preventable workplace injuries. Here are a few steps employers can take to cut back on “behavioral” accidents:

• Appraise the situation: Take a closer look at past employee injuries that have occurred in your workplace. If you notice any patterns or trends, it’s time to make significant changes in that area. For example, if most injuries occurred when employees were attempting to carry heavy boxes, focus on teaching workers to safely move boxes with the assistance of another worker or a forklift.
• Get supervisors on board: Ensure that your front line supervisors make injury prevention a top priority. Not only should they constantly enforce safety guidelines, but they also need to raise awareness throughout the ranks.
• Work as a team: Workplace injury prevention requires plenty of teamwork. Make sure that all your employees understand the importance of working together and keeping an eye out for their fellow workers.
• Create incentive programs: Consider offering your workers special rewards for sustaining a safe workplace. For example, let workers know that if there are no injuries within a 6- or 12-month period, they’ll be rewarded with a party, gift certificates or even an extra vacation day. This will give them greater incentive to make safe choices on a daily basis.
• Hire the right people: Try to employ safety-conscious, reliable workers who are genuinely concerned with injury prevention.
• Train your workers: Without the proper education and training, workers cannot be expected to perform their jobs safely. Ensure that all your employees are well-trained in safety guidelines and offer refresher courses each year.

Changing human behavior is no easy task. It will take loads of time and hard work to change your employees’ ways, but it will be well worth the effort in the long run. If you can successfully adjust your workers’ attitudes, you’ll enjoy lower insurance premiums, more productive workers and fewer injury-related absences. You might even be eligible for inclusion in OSHA’s Safety and Health Achievement Recognition Program (SHARP). This program recognizes small businesses with an exemplary safety and health management system. If you receive this prominent recognition, your worksite will be exempt from programmed inspections as long as your SHARP certification is valid.

Workers Compensation is often one of the largest items in a business’ insurance budget. Relatively small claims for injuries like cuts or abrasions can impact the coverage’s cost, but more influential are the larger claims for more serious injuries. This type of loss requires the insurance company to set up a reserve, or estimate of a claim’s ultimate cost. The accuracy of a reserve has important implications for both the employer and insurer.

Businesses might feel that insurers set reserves too high, and that can happen. Over-reserving unnecessarily inflates the insurer’s liabilities and reduces its surplus (net worth.) This in turn reduces the amount of insurance the company can provide without raising fears about its financial stability. Although the experience modification formula penalizes a firm more for frequent claims than for severe ones, over-reserving does make the firm’s modification greater than it should be, resulting in higher premiums. Finally, over-reserving distorts a firm’s loss ratio, which makes the firm’s business less attractive to underwriters.

Under-reserving presents the greater threat to insurers. If the company sets the reserve too low, the claim can develop more rapidly than expected. The company might eventually find itself with a large obligation for which it is not prepared to play. Also, company managers tend to focus their attention on large claims and delegate handling of smaller ones. This means that an under-reserved claim will not receive proper management attention; the company will not apply claim control measures until it is too late for them to make a difference. Inadequate reserves can also affect a company’s financial stability ratings. Rating agencies such as A.M. Best might decide to lower a company’s rating if it finds significant under-reserving. This might cause customers to move their business to companies with higher ratings.

Certain types of claims are more likely than others to develop into high-dollar ones. Back injuries tend to be very expensive. Aging factory or warehouse laborers who have endured years of stress might need long-term treatment and, in some cases, surgery. Depending on the worker’s age, he might not return to work. Older employees who suffer injuries to their feet and legs might also have expensive claims. These employees might have pre-existing conditions, such as diabetes or hypertension, which worsen the consequences of an injury, resulting in amputations or heart attacks. Other injuries might aggravate conditions such as obesity or spinal problems, making the worker’s diagnosis more severe and increasing the disability period.

Other claims might develop into large losses because of the worker’s circumstances. Suppose a two-earner household has been paying for childcare for years, and the youngest child reaches the age where such care is no longer necessary. The parents are accustomed to a standard of living where they live on the after-childcare income. Workers Compensation benefits with no childcare expense might be similar to a parent’s wages after paying for childcare. This gives the worker less of an incentive to return to work. Workers who are nearing retirement also have a reduced incentive to return to the job after experiencing a period of disability, as they might be mentally prepared to stop working. Conversely, seasonal employees who need income to carry them through the off-season have incentives to prolong their disability periods. So do workers whose companies are laying off employees or whose plants are closing.

Employers should work closely with our insurance agents and companies to monitor Workers Compensation claim activity. Claims that fit into any of the types described above need special attention. The art of claim reserving is one of making educated estimates based on evidence and experience. Employers should verify that their insurers’ claim reserves are both fair and realistic.

Before employees in high-risk jobs like construction will act on the safety information their employers provide, they have to be convinced that it is both reliable and useful. This is the finding of a study appearing in Communication Currents, an online publication of the National Communication Association. Another significant outcome of this research is the discovery that workers who feel confident about the quality of the safety information they are receiving are more likely to perceive that they are working safely.

The author of the study, Kevin Real, Ph.D., from the University of Kentucky, used surveys to examine employee perceptions of how available safety information was at their job site, how likely they were to seek out available information, and how their personal safety behaviors were influenced by risk and the usefulness of the information they were given. The list below outlines some of his other pertinent findings:

• Workers’ perceptions of how much risk is posed by a particular situation are influenced by how much confidence they have in their ability to stay safe. Workers who feel capable of dealing with risks might view them as challenges to be overcome. However, workers who feel they don’t have the ability to stay safe might see themselves as vulnerable to injury. Accordingly, workers with a high level of confidence will respond differently to a hazard than workers who feel vulnerable. This response manifests itself in how well workers follow safety regulations. For example, employees who believe that wearing proper safety protection, such as hard hats, safety glasses, and earplugs, will keep them safe typically have a greater sense of their own capability to maintain their safety.
• Developing worker confidence begins with using first-line supervisors to provide safety information, both in word and by example. Workers surveyed indicated that having interaction about safety with the same individual in charge of productivity show how important safety is to the organization. Supervisors should make safety information available to workers who show they are proactive about safety as a way of helping them meet their personal safety goals.
• Safety messages must be simple. Messages that contain too much information about too many procedures and that do not prioritize the more important activities will likely be ignored. That’s because too many details leave employees confused about how to improve their own safety on the job. Real believes that while simplicity is best for safety discussions with the general work population, employers should always make more information available to workers who are proactive about safety. He believes that these workers are more likely to want more information and will seek it out when they know it is available. Making safety information available can also overcome suspicion that the organization isn’t doing enough to protect workers.
• Organizations should emphasize positive behaviors as opposed to trying to stop negative ones. Explaining that earplugs prevent hearing loss shows a positive way to avoid a hazard. However, telling workers to stop fooling around on the job provides them with no positive behavior to substitute for the negative one. The employee doesn’t learn what is considered “fooling around,” why it should be avoided, and what are acceptable expressions of social interaction in the workplace.

Safety messages need to be reinforced by being delivering the same message through more than one medium. Asking workers to watch, hear, and read safety messages acknowledges and accommodates the different ways in which people learn and makes it more likely safety messages will be integrated.