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It All Comes Down to ‘Dollars and Sense’

Marsha Daniel

September 01, 2010

Watching the evening financial news is so depressing.  The news is full of talk of continuing jobless claims and the murmurs of corporate layoffs required as a cost-cutting tool.   It depresses me to realize that any more cutting of additional US human resources will only accelerate the downward spiral of American businesses.

 

Aren’t there better solutions to cutting costs?  YES!  Let’s start our business cost cutting in reducing health costs – and I’m not talking about the Federal Health Reform Act recently signed into law.   No.  I’m talking about  businesses  developing  effective driver safety programs which will reduce their employee  health costs (workers compensation medical and disability insurance, health insurance, Social Security disability insurance, life insurance, sick time, property loss, legal expenses, lost production, sick leave,--the list goes on and on!).   Now that’s an encouraging thought, isn’t it!?!

 

Although most companies recognize they are directly responsible for the safety of their employees in the workplace, they may struggle with the perception that a company has to spend a lot of time and money to develop & maintain an effective safety program to keep their employees safe—and they feel they just can’t afford it.   Just think about it:  All the production time lost on safety committee meetings, the policy & procedure development, the employee training, the behavior observations & the data analysis – the list goes on and on!  I’ve worked in business too many years.  There is a prevailing thought that in tough economic times, 'safety training' should be one of the first thing scratched from the budget.

 

The reality, conversely, is that companies can’t afford to cut safety. The risk is too great… the cost of an accident -  so much money and human suffering  - safety is a cost saver!  

 

So where is the greatest safety risk for our employees and our business you ask?  Amazingly enough, It’s a topic which many businesses have yet to even address (yes, you guessed it!) - preventing the risk of on-the-job vehicle crashes.  

 

Did you know that the average cost of an on-the job ‘accident’ with an injury is about $75,000.  The cost of a fatality these days starts at about $500,000.  The economic cost of motor vehicle crashes for on the job crashes was $40 billion in 2000 (NHTSA).  An additional $20 billion is spent by employers because of their employees off-the- job crashes as well!

 

TRAFFIC CRASHES IS THE NUMBER ONE CAUSE ON ON-THE-JOB DEATHS http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf) - (#2  is falls, #3 & 4 are homicides and struck by object deaths).  

 

What should this mean to employers?  It  means you need to shake the dust off your Driver Safety Program Manual and try to figure out what could make it more effective and if you don’t have a driver safety program, it’s time to start saving the jobs (lives) of your employees instead of cutting their jobs!  

 

Are you alone with this valiant challenge?  No.  At a recent Traffic Safety Summit in Baton Rouge, I took the opportunity to poll a group of business persons regarding the perceived effectiveness of their companies’ Driver Safety Programs.  

 

Here’s what they said:

Over 30% of those polled said they did not think that their company even had a driver safety program in place.

Of those companies that had a driver program, less than 50% felt it was an effective program.

Less than 20% of those polled utilized principles of behavior-based safety within their program. 

 

This indicates we have a lot of work to do if we are serious about wanting to reduce crashes and deaths while saving money at the same time (what a win/win opportunity we all share!).

 

Here’s what I think the most difficult part of this challenge is:  It’s easy to develop a Driver Safety Program if you are supplied with the knowledge of the minimum elements, but it’s not so easy to develop an effective Safety Program.  What makes a program work ?  

 

 We have spent 40 years within industry learning how to utilize the principles of behavior-based safety to successfully reduce accidents in the workplace.  Now it’s time we take the same steps to establish these same principles within our driver programs.  

 

Yes.  I can hear what you are thinking.  I’ve heard it all before: murmurings that ‘behavior-based safety won’t work for drivers.’ After all, there is not an opportunity for peer observation when most drivers drive alone, right?

 

Humm.  I don’t agree. I think we should be moving behavior-based safety toward teaching the skill of self-examination of our risky behaviors rather than peer observation anyway!  I remember how I used to feel when I knew someone was watching me work!  That’s enough to make someone do something unsafe (thinking about ‘them’ instead of what I was doing)!

 

I’ve just recently completed developing a new driving awareness course for persons who need ticket dismissal or want to reduce their insurance premium.  While developing the course the fact that traffic deaths were almost twice as high as any other cause of on-the-job fatalities I realized educating the individual driver is not enough.   I understand now how important it is for employers to use effective driver education courses that focus on behavior modification.

 

But educating the employee drivers is just one part of reducing vehicle-related incidents and crashes.  Company employers need easy ways to produce and maintain effective driver safety programs that are successful in preventing crashes (and yes, reducing costs of crashes).   (By the way, I have quit calling these driver safety programs ‘Fleet’ Programs’ because too often the term ‘fleet’ gives us tunnel vision and keeps us from including all those employees who drive from one place to another on company business.)

 

If you have something that has made your business successful, share your success story with us.  Working together to prevent traffic crashes will not only drive down the costs of being in business ---but think about the safety culture you will be establishing, not just for on-the-job --but  by our employees when they are driving at home, with their families, on our local highways, side-by-side with our own families.   We can do this!

 

For more than twenty years Marsha Daniel has worked to assure the safety of workers in the Greater Baton Rouge area - first as a trainer and now as the instructional design specialist at the Safety Council of the Louisiana Capital Area. She has worked with the Baton Rouge DA's office to identify unmet driver training needs. You can learn more about the elements of an effective driver safety program during the Traffic Safety Summit on the opening day of the conference. This complimentary event, sponsored through a grant from the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission, is open to the public.

 

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