By Bill Sims Jr.

It was about 2:30 p.m. and I had just finished a speaking assignment for the Tarheel Safety Chapter in Charlotte, North Carolina. They are a lively group of safety professionals who asked me to come and speak about behavior change, which I did. While there I learned a lot about some changes coming down the pipeline from OSHA, from my new BFF, Bob, with OSHA (more on that later).

After the meeting, I packed up my computer and projector and put them in the trunk of my car, sliding into the front seat. As I’ve done a million times before, I put the key in the switch and turned it to the right, convinced in my mind that I was about to hear that good old V8 rumble to life, one of my top ten favorite PICs in life.

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By Gunther Hoock

Horizon Lines, and Hawaii Stevedores, Inc. (HIS), affiliated organizations in Honolulu, Hawaii, recently reported great success implementing a program that rewards employees for safe behaviors. Horizon Lines and Hawaii Stevedores, Inc. (HSI), a division that provides stevedoring services, kicked off a behavioral safety approach focusing on safe behaviors that lead to safe results in September of 2009 and have already realized significant positive change.

Horizon Lines, the nation’s leading domestic ocean shipping company, operates five port terminals linking the continental United States with Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, Micronesia, and Puerto Rico. Its Honolulu employees and HSI’s longshoremen load and unload the massive containers of multiple ingoing and outgoing cargo ships, often in the dead of night.

The work is tough and can be hazardous. “We have to move a lot of cargo in a short period of time because we affect vessel schedules at other ports if there is a delay here,” said Frank Roznerski, Manager Safety, Security & Hazmat for Horizon Lines Honolulu. “We are constantly toiling with the balance between safety and production.”

In a matter of three months, both organizations have made great strides in achieving that balance. Using the methods of the Bill Sims Company, the two groups now specify, recognize, and reward behaviors—an approach that eliminates the injury hiding that occurs when people are rewarded only for “zero incident/accident” goals. In the first 90 days, this process has resulted in a 64 percent reduction in safety incidents and a 60 percent reduction in recordable accidents for Horizon Lines. HSI reports a 28 percent reduction in lost time injuries.

Horizon Lines comparison between Sept.- Nov. 2008 and the same period 2009.

Year       Incidents      Recordables
2008           28                  10
2009           10                   4
Reduction    64%               60%

“Changing old habits can be very tough. People have their own style and ways of doing things which we find may not be the safest way. Trying to get them to do things the right way has been a great challenge, but we don’t want to create an adversarial relationship. We want to be able to work in the spirit of cooperation. We have had high injury rates and we needed to do something different to get different results. The Bill Sims program provided us the vehicle and the means to do so. It changed the method in which we go out there and try to implement safety,” said Roznerski.

These new numbers reflect only three months of the new safety process, also taking place during the peak season prior to the Christmas Holidays. During that period the groups celebrated nine weeks of no lost time injuries!

Gunther Hoock is the corporate safety director for Horizon Lines Honolulu.

Given the potential for under-reporting and the other negative effects associated with payment schemes based on outcome measures and the lack of evidence of value from them, we recommend that such schemes should not be used in the industry.” This conclusion stated in the Digging Deeper Report regarding mine safety for the New South Wales (NSW) Mine Safety Advisory Council (MSAC), in Australia, at first glance may indicate that safety incentive programs have received a bad grade, but not so! On the contrary, the extensively researched report, that examined all sectors of the NSW mining industry, recommends the primary components of a behavior-based safety incentive process: worker participation in setting goals, management involvement, and recognition of safe behaviors that lead to safe results.

The key word here is “outcome.” Those conducting this in-depth study of the usefulness of Safety Incentive Schemes went on to make important discoveries that support the validity of safety incentives processes that reward “leading” behaviors as opposed to “lagging results.” In short, their cease-and-desist recommendations apply only to safety approaches that reward outcomes such as low accident and injury rates—rewards that promote injury hiding. In their own words, “  . . the ideal safety incentive scheme provides recognition for high achievement and contribution, not payment in exchange for low levels of reported injuries, however defined.” By recommending a shift from “a focus on outcome data to a focus on improvement and contribution,” the folks down under have made a major first step in endorsing and embracing behavior-based safety incentives that will make a positive and lasting difference in mine industry safety.

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