THE BOTTOM LINE
Increasing Worker Safety Decreases Insurance
Premiums
By Liese Hutchison
Every eight
seconds in the United States a worker is disabled on the job;
every hour and a half, a worker is fatally injured, according
to the National Safety Council. Whether a manufacturing facility,
a construction company or a service business, employees are getting
hurt on the job and employers are getting hurt on the bottom line
because of skyrocketing worker's compensation premiums.
Whitaker
Meyer, president and CEO of Lockton Companies, says these numbers
can be reduced by implementing effective employee safety programs.
The first step is to analyze existing claims. "From your insurance
company, you can get claim information and the specifics of what
happened, who was injured and how the employee was injured," he
states. "Your historical claim information, once analyzed, can
help you determine a trend." Meyer says that 95 percent of all
worker compensation claims are a result of human behavior, not
as a result of a machine breaking down or a mechanical breakdown.
To
modify human behavior, first it must be observed and analyzed.
Meyer says Lockton safety engineers visit client sites to monitor
how workers perform their everyday tasks, then make behavior recommendations,
implement them and monitor the workers again to see if these modifications
have resulted in creating a safe environment.
"There
are no quick fixes when it comes to safety," Meyers notes. "You
can't take recommendations
from one industry to the next; each has its own needs."
Gary
Muck, a safety engineer with Lockton, says an organization must
improve its "safety culture" by doing four things:
- Restructure
the accountability system so that safety becomes a part of everyday
operations;
- Train all
levels of staff on how to complete various safety tasks through
such things as safety orientations, safety meetings, inspections
and accident investigations;
-
Teach
managers and front-line supervisors how to use basic behavior
modification concepts in order to shape consistent, safe behavior;
-
Convey
the message, from top management, that only zero accidents
are acceptable.
Meyers
agrees. "The companies that we find that have the best safety
programs make safety a part of their culture. It starts at
the top, then supervisors and middle management and then the
employees. The more you get the employees on the line involved
in the process, the better off you are," he states. "Once
the employees know that everyone cares about safety, that
becomes something very positive that this company only considers
it a great place to work if it's a safe place to work.
"Even
with the best safety programs in the world, there still will
be claims. Employers need to remember to investigate each
claim thoroughly and when a claim happens, start the process
again," Meyers recommends. He's says when the safety culture
becomes part of the workplace culture and someone is injured,
the reaction is "we're not going to let that happen again."
Muck
cited a steel fabrication client as an example of how top
management commitment, along with behavior modification, resulted
in the company lowering its claims from $430,000 in 1997 to
$22,000 in 1999.
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Workplace
Injury Facts
- There
were 5,100 workplace fatalities in 1998 due to unintentional
injuries. Approximately an additional 1,200 deaths in
the workplace are due to homicides and suicides each year.
- At
work, there is a fatal injury every 103 minutes and a
disabling injury every eight seconds.
- In
1998, 3.8 million American workers suffered from disabling
injuries on the job.
- The
four leading fatal events and exposures are highway traffic
incidents, homicide, falls to a lower level, and being
struck by an object.
- For
women workers, homicides were the leading cause of workplace
injury deaths.
- The
agriculture industry accounted for 780 deaths and 140,000
disabling injuries in 1998. Agriculture workers had the
second highest death rate among the major industry divisions.
- Work
injuries cost Americans $125.1 billion in 1998 -- that's
equivalent to nearly triple the combined profits reported
by the top five Fortune 500 companies in 1998.
Source:
National Safety Council
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