Driving Down Your EMR
It’s been said
that construction safety management should consist of gentle pressure,
relentlessly applied. And you need to freshen up your safety program now and
then; nobody wants the safety effort to grow stale. If it does, workers start to
expect safety incentives as a matter of course, not something to be earned. Your
experience modification ratio (EMR) can begin to rise, and that’s not good. The
goal is to drive down the EMR.
Ed Pore, the
director of environmental safety and health at Pulice Construction, says he’s
concerned about his company’s EMR. Because the Phoenix, AZ–based contractor has
grown, its EMR has climbed to 0.88, up from 0.52 a few years ago. With a higher
EMR, insurance costs more, and if your EMR reaches 1.0, you may not be invited
to bid on certain jobs.
“We’re in a
strong push to drive down our EMR,” says Pore, a certified safety professional.
The first goal
at Pulice is to avoid accidents. But when accidents do happen, Pulice
aggressively manages claims. That means getting injured employees back to work
as soon as possible, even under restricted work duty. Pore and Pulice management
figure that the company is money ahead on insurance premiums to pay injured
employees full wages to do restricted duty rather than give them two-thirds pay
to sit at home.
“It’s less
expensive to pay them full wages on restricted work than to have them not work
and draw two-thirds of pay,” says Pore. “We keep the EMR low. It’s hard to sell
management to keep the walking wounded on the payroll, but in the big picture we
save money. It’s an unwritten rule that if your EMR is 1.00 and above, you’re
undesirable from a safety perspective.”
Good safety
practice demands involvement in the safety effort from management and workers,
Pore says. “We do safety audits, which is another term for safety inspections. I
do them, project managers do them, superintendents do them. Sometimes we
announce them, and sometimes we don’t.”
What works
well, Pore says, is for a project manager or superintendent to accompany him on
a safety audit. That way the other man learns what to look for in a safety
audit. “We try to spread the responsibility around,” says Pore.
Pulice runs a
safety incentive program. Foremen and supervisors can earn $200 per quarter for
going accident-free. Superintendents can earn $300 per quarter for a zero
accident rate. Job-site administrators earn incentives for turning in safety
reports on time—reports of safety meetings and toolbox talks held. The criterion
for an accident is that if you go to the doctor, it counts as an accident.
If an employee
has an accident, he is out of the safety incentive program for a year. And his
foreman and superintendent are taken out of the program for a quarter. Project
managers don’t get any incentives; their rewards are considered to be a
successful project in itself.
This cash
rewards program is new at Pulice. Formerly the company used a program called
START, which was a behavior assessment program. Management assessed employee
behavior and rewarded them based upon good scores. Employees were rated on
wearing personal protective equipment, safe work habits, good attitudes, and
other details. “We were giving employees logo clothing, logo hats, logo
flashlights, and so forth,” says Pore.
There came a
point when that didn’t work anymore. A foreman would get too busy to think
carefully about his behavior assessments, and speedily whip out the reports. “We
called it pencil whipping,” says Pore. “And managers would give friends higher
ratings. Now it’s a pure safety incentive. Rewards are based purely on results.
So far, it’s working pretty well. We just passed six months with no lost-time
claims.”
Sundt
Construction, a highway and heavy contractor based in Tempe, AZ, has an EMR of
0.62. “No, we’re not happy with that 0.62,” says Brian Murphy, vice president
and director of quality and safety. “We’d like to get the EMR down to 0.50, but
that’s difficult to do, given the type of work we do. It’s more dangerous than
installing ceiling tile.”
What has worked
well for Sundt, says Murphy, is to preplan safety into a job. “Since we started
preplanning safety into our jobs, we have gotten a safety record that’s 10 times
better than it was 10 years ago,” says Murphy.
For example,
Sundt holds meetings prior to bidding a job. Company managers walk through the
project and plan the safety measures needed. Then after the project is bid and
won, the project team holds more meetings at which safety measures are planned.
And Sundt holds weekly safety meetings on the job.
Sundt prepares
a written task hazard analysis of every separate task on the job. That analysis
spells out the hazards, safety issues, and measures needed to make the task
safe. It’s a living document, says Murphy, and can be changed as needed or to
respond to an employee’s suggestion.
“On a daily
basis, we have a ‘safety huddle,’” says Murphy. “That’s where the crews get
together before a shift, or when they change what they’re doing. They take five
to 10 minutes to go through the techniques they will use and the safety measures
needed. If the process changes, or the weather changes, it’s OK to change the
task hazard analysis.”
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Murphy says
Sundt builds safety into project schedules. For example, if a crew is laying
pipe in a 4-foot-deep trench, then needs to dig a deeper hole for a 20-foot-deep
siphon, the crew will look ahead and schedule that deeper hole. It will require
a trench shield, which needs to be scheduled into the job—ahead of time.
“We’re selling
safety through production,” says Murphy. “If you can show a superintendent how
he can meet his production rate by preplanning, then you can sell the safety
piece as part of the preplanning. We didn’t do that 10 years ago. You marry
production with safety. It’s working for us.”
Author's Bio: Daniel C. Brown is the owner of TechniComm, a communications business based in Des Plaines, IL.
Buyers Guide 2010
Driving Down Your EMR
It’s been said
that construction safety management should consist of gentle pressure,
relentlessly applied. And you need to freshen up your safety program now and
then; nobody wants the safety effort to grow stale. If it does, workers start to
expect safety incentives as a matter of course, not something to be earned. Your
experience modification ratio (EMR) can begin to rise, and that’s not good. The
goal is to drive down the EMR.
Ed Pore, the
director of environmental safety and health at Pulice Construction, says he’s
concerned about his company’s EMR. Because the Phoenix, AZ–based contractor has
grown, its EMR has climbed to 0.88, up from 0.52 a few years ago. With a higher
EMR, insurance costs more, and if your EMR reaches 1.0, you may not be invited
to bid on certain jobs.
“We’re in a
strong push to drive down our EMR,” says Pore, a certified safety professional.
The first goal
at Pulice is to avoid accidents. But when accidents do happen, Pulice
aggressively manages claims. That means getting injured employees back to work
as soon as possible, even under restricted work duty. Pore and Pulice management
figure that the company is money ahead on insurance premiums to pay injured
employees full wages to do restricted duty rather than give them two-thirds pay
to sit at home.
“It’s less
expensive to pay them full wages on restricted work than to have them not work
and draw two-thirds of pay,” says Pore. “We keep the EMR low. It’s hard to sell
management to keep the walking wounded on the payroll, but in the big picture we
save money. It’s an unwritten rule that if your EMR is 1.00 and above, you’re
undesirable from a safety perspective.”
Good safety
practice demands involvement in the safety effort from management and workers,
Pore says. “We do safety audits, which is another term for safety inspections. I
do them, project managers do them, superintendents do them. Sometimes we
announce them, and sometimes we don’t.”
What works
well, Pore says, is for a project manager or superintendent to accompany him on
a safety audit. That way the other man learns what to look for in a safety
audit. “We try to spread the responsibility around,” says Pore.
Pulice runs a
safety incentive program. Foremen and supervisors can earn $200 per quarter for
going accident-free. Superintendents can earn $300 per quarter for a zero
accident rate. Job-site administrators earn incentives for turning in safety
reports on time—reports of safety meetings and toolbox talks held. The criterion
for an accident is that if you go to the doctor, it counts as an accident.
If an employee
has an accident, he is out of the safety incentive program for a year. And his
foreman and superintendent are taken out of the program for a quarter. Project
managers don’t get any incentives; their rewards are considered to be a
successful project in itself.
This cash
rewards program is new at Pulice. Formerly the company used a program called
START, which was a behavior assessment program. Management assessed employee
behavior and rewarded them based upon good scores. Employees were rated on
wearing personal protective equipment, safe work habits, good attitudes, and
other details. “We were giving employees logo clothing, logo hats, logo
flashlights, and so forth,” says Pore.
There came a
point when that didn’t work anymore. A foreman would get too busy to think
carefully about his behavior assessments, and speedily whip out the reports. “We
called it pencil whipping,” says Pore. “And managers would give friends higher
ratings. Now it’s a pure safety incentive. Rewards are based purely on results.
So far, it’s working pretty well. We just passed six months with no lost-time
claims.”
Sundt
Construction, a highway and heavy contractor based in Tempe, AZ, has an EMR of
0.62. “No, we’re not happy with that 0.62,” says Brian Murphy, vice president
and director of quality and safety. “We’d like to get the EMR down to 0.50, but
that’s difficult to do, given the type of work we do. It’s more dangerous than
installing ceiling tile.”
What has worked
well for Sundt, says Murphy, is to preplan safety into a job. “Since we started
preplanning safety into our jobs, we have gotten a safety record that’s 10 times
better than it was 10 years ago,” says Murphy.
For example,
Sundt holds meetings prior to bidding a job. Company managers walk through the
project and plan the safety measures needed. Then after the project is bid and
won, the project team holds more meetings at which safety measures are planned.
And Sundt holds weekly safety meetings on the job.
Sundt prepares
a written task hazard analysis of every separate task on the job. That analysis
spells out the hazards, safety issues, and measures needed to make the task
safe. It’s a living document, says Murphy, and can be changed as needed or to
respond to an employee’s suggestion.
“On a daily
basis, we have a ‘safety huddle,’” says Murphy. “That’s where the crews get
together before a shift, or when they change what they’re doing. They take five
to 10 minutes to go through the techniques they will use and the safety measures
needed. If the process changes, or the weather changes, it’s OK to change the
task hazard analysis.”
Murphy says
Sundt builds safety into project schedules. For example, if a crew is laying
pipe in a 4-foot-deep trench, then needs to dig a deeper hole for a 20-foot-deep
siphon, the crew will look ahead and schedule that deeper hole. It will require
a trench shield, which needs to be scheduled into the job—ahead of time.
“We’re selling
safety through production,” says Murphy. “If you can show a superintendent how
he can meet his production rate by preplanning, then you can sell the safety
piece as part of the preplanning. We didn’t do that 10 years ago. You marry
production with safety. It’s working for us.”