Behavioral Safety Improves WC Loss

Corporations looking for improvements in their workers' compensation loss trends should consider employing behavioral safety procedures that aim to train workers to make safer choices in the workplace, an insurance broker executive said.

Pressure to boost productivity in the workplace causes workers to take shortcuts that are often “easier, faster and more comfortable” than following safety procedures, said Leo Carlin of Marsh's Behavioral Services practice. These shortcuts prevent corporations from making greater improvements in their workers' comp losses. Behavioral systems can be put in place, however, that encourage workers to make better, safer choices and help reduce losses, he said.

His observations came as part of insurance broker Marsh's ongoing series of panel discussions on The New Reality of Risk. Today's presentation was titled, “Workers Compensation: Pre-loss Safety Issues.”

Mr. Carlin said that while companies can reach certain benchmarks, often they have trouble going beyond those benchmarks and making additional improvements. Behavioral solutions aim to help employees make better decisions and follow procedures while balancing the pressures of productivity they face daily.

Punitive procedures have limits on what they can accomplish, Mr. Carlin pointed out, and do not have the desired effect of continuing to improve performance.

“We want to make it more likely that folks will take the safe path at every choice point,” said Mr. Carlin. “We are talking about a positive method that is driven by frontline workers.”

The process is a group effort, where employees measure one another's safety and discuss the best way of completing a task safely. They not only measure, but celebrate the success of their efforts as loss safety improves.

There is also a buy-in from management; managers support the process and listen to workers, jointly supporting the goal of creating a safer workplace.

“There is a learning period for all involved–for workers and management alike,” said Mr. Carlin, but once it is up and running it is not a labor intensive process.

He said he believed there are no limitations to the implementation of this process in any workplace.

“Changing behavior is hard work,” observed Mr. Carlin. “It is even more difficult to produce lasting change in behavior particularly in environments that produce the behavior that we do not want.

“Changing behavior requires a change in the behavior's support system,” he continued. “We have to balance the system that also supports safe behavior.”

A complete re-airing of the panel discussion is available on the Web at www.marsh.com.