Many of us are familiar with some of the common texting abbreviations. LY means “Love You.” ROTFL means “Rolling On the Floor Laughing.” And then there's IHAHCAWTU, which means “In Hospital After Having Car Accident While Texting You.”
Safety is no laughing matter, though. In “Top Practices of Successful Companies: A Roadmap to Success,” Doug Dickinson of Marsh & McLennan Agency LLC outlined how insurance costs are impacted by our safety results and how the top 10 loss-prevention practices of successful companies can be applied. He spoke at the National Tank Truck Carriers Tank Truck Safety & Security Council Annual Seminar April 6-8 in Nashville, Tennessee.
The main areas of focus are vehicle maintenance, driver hiring and training, and management commitment. Additional factors impacting the premium are exposures (mileage, vehicle count, and payrolls), radius, states of operation, and the type of commodities being hauled.
He said fleet safety programs should have management controls to identify an opportunity, analyze it, design and select the best solution, execute and implement it, and measure the results. Gap analysis is a systemic review of an organization's current performance against past results, internal goals, and industry averages. Fleet safety management controls must be measured against industry best practices.
A review is important in order to highlight program strengths, detect problems, identify opportunities, and provide a “Roadmap to Success.”
The top-10 loss-prevention practices of successful companies:
- Safety first.
“Everybody is going to say, ‘I believe in safety first, and it is part of the culture in my company,’ ” Dickinson said. “But I would challenge that. If you were to look at the performance appraisal of your VP of Safety, is safety the first of the metrics? Probably not. Every meeting and conference call should start with a safety topic. It should be the key point on everyone's performance appraisal. It shouldn't just be a phrase.”
- The operations group “owns” safety.
“I believe that in better companies, the VP of Safety is a consultant. It is the terminal manager who is responsible for safety results. That is because terminal managers are responsible for everything. The driver should never be in a situation where his leader and the safety manager tell him different answers. Drivers don't want to be in that spot. Drivers are the circuit breakers of the industry. When anything goes wrong, the driver has to make a decision. He can't wait for the next morning. He's going to make a call. When the terminal manager owns it, you're always going to be doing the right thing, and you'll keep the driver out of a bad spot.”
- Manage remote facilities effectively.
“You want managers and employees across the system to follow consistent corporate best practices. You have to document it, and you need some sort of online system. You need a strong terminal manager who takes the initiative and makes things happen. The key to achieving balance is a good corporate audit.”
- New hire orientation.
“Best practice is an interactive training process that gives drivers a chance to ask questions. It needs to be hands-on and focus on the most critical tasks. After the orientation, fleets should conduct a 90-day follow-up for a refresher as well as provide remedial training. Find out what the driver has done well, and give some additional training. Best practice is not two days of watching videos.”
- Driver trainer program.
“If you are the smartest man in the world but can't communicate effectively, that's not good. Being a great driver does not make you a great trainer. Having a group of great trainers doing what they think is best is not a good program. If you don't have a very clear process, you're leaving it up to discretion of that trainer. Look for people who are good leaders, and train them to be trainers. A company can't afford to have new hires in training a day longer than necessary. Control costs by deciding what happens each day.”
- Analyze loss trends.
“The typical safety director is going to say, ‘I live and die by our accidents.’ A benefit of loss analysis is that you get some surprises. You're trying to find that needle in a haystack. When you do find something, develop a corrective-action program. It will make you more effective. Determine the root cause after every loss — vehicle crash, injury, cargo, near miss — and capture losses in a database. You want three years of history. Pick up seasonal trends.”
- Professional development.
“When a driver comes in the very first day, he's going to give him a lot of training. Drivers are important, but I think you could argue persuasively that leaders have an even greater impact on the results of your business. Managers generally don't get the level of training a driver gets. You have to develop the right traits and qualities.”
- Post loss training.
“What do you do from a post-loss training perspective? It's not the safety guy. It's the dispatcher/terminal manager. We need to leave with a good document that is going to feed that loss-control database with good contributing factors, which is going to set up the safety director with a complete analysis as he's setting up the program for next year. With drivers, you want it to be non-punitive. You need a lesson plan created for trainers to follow. Address the correct issue. Is it skill or is it attitude? If a driver never admits he could have done anything differently to prevent it, why spend another minute talking about the driving? The bigger issue is attitude and the commitment that ‘I could have done something differently.’ ”
- Technology.
“You have to love it, and at the same time, you have to hate it. This is a relationship business. When you try to replace relationships with technology, you're not going to get the desired outcome. You have to make the technology part of the relationship, and you need to notify drivers immediately when the technology identifies a problem. If you find out that an event occurred today, you need to deal with it today. If you wait until the end of the month and find out you've had 37 events, that is not going to be a very effective confrontation.”
- Accountability.
“How do you hold people accountable for delivering on the expectations? Organizations with effective accountability controls have the best programs, because what is expected and what is looked for and what is done are in alignment. From an accountability perspective on an annual performance review, if safety is not the key metric on every performance appraisal, is safety truly first in your organization?”
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