What is a good recommendation?

Once you have developed engineering and administrative controls to eliminate or reduce injuries, the challenge becomes convincing management to make changes. Management will most likely understand the importance of taking corrective action and readily agree to you ideas. However, if management doesn't quite understand the benefits, success becomes less likely. Your ability to present effective recommendations becomes all that more important. This module will help you learn how do put together "an offer they can't refuse," by emphasizing the long-term bottom-line benefits of the corrective action you are recommending.

Why decision-makers don't respond quickly

When recommendations are not acted upon, it is usually because the decision-maker does not have enough information to make a judgment. To speed up the process and to improve the approval rate, you must learn to anticipate the questions the decision-maker will ask in order to sign off on the requested change. This being the case, the more pertinent information included in the presentation, the higher the odds are for approval.

To develop great recommendations, ask six key questions

Remember the scenario from Module 6? If you didn't, I've placed it below for your review. We're going to use this scenario to make some effective recommendations for corrective action. We want to make sure this accident never happens to Bob (or anyone else) again. You'll do this by reviewing the accident scenario and answering six key questions. With the information gained, you will conclude by writing a recommendation. Your job is to convince me (your supervisor) that your ideas make sense... and I'm busy, so make it good!

Bob was a new hire employee working as a clean up person in the finish department of XYZ, Inc's particle board plant. On his first day of work, he received an initial classroom orientation on company policies from the personnel department. He was also introduced to his new supervisor who gave him a walk-around tour of the plant. Since his supervisor was quite busy, and didn't have time to fully brief Bob on his new job, he was then given some simple initial duties to accomplish. He was busy cleaning up around the floor under the return belt of a conveyor connected to a large piece of machinery. He removed a guard covering pinch points on the conveyor, and reached into the area to remove the piece of wood. Bob's glove became caught in the return drum nip point, and he was drawn into the machinery. Luckily, Bob was eventually able to pull himself out of the machinery before being injured. XYZ, Inc. has a mod rate of 1.5. Unfortunately, this incident was not a total surprise to the company. Most of their OSHA 300 Log recordable accidents have been the result of injuries to employees within their first six months on the job.

Answer the following six questions to help develop and justify recommendations.

1. What exactly is the problem?

• What are the specific hazardous conditions and unsafe work practices that caused the problem?
• What are system components - the inadequate design or implementation of safety management programs, policies, plans, processes, procedures and general practices that allowed the conditions and behaviors to exist?

2. What is the history of the problem?

Have similar accidents occurred previously? If so, you should be able to claim that the probability for similar accidents is highly likely to certain. What are previous direct and indirect costs for similar accidents? How have similar accidents affected production and morale?

• Describe how it has affected direct, budgeted or insured costs related to past injuries or illnesses.
• How has it affected indirect, unbudgeted or uninsured costs related to loss of efficiency and/or productivity and employee morale?

3. What are the solutions that would correct the problem?

What are the specific engineering, administrative and PPE controls that, when applied, will eliminate or at least reduce exposure to the hazardous conditions? What are the specific system improvements needed to ensure a long term fix?

4. Who is the decision-maker?

Who is the person who can approve, authorize, and act on the corrective measures? What are the possible objections that he/she might have? What are the arguments that will be most effective in overcoming objections?

5. Why is that person doing safety?

It's important to know what is motivating the decision-maker. Is the decision-maker doing safety to fulfill one or more of the following imperatives?

• Fulfill the legal obligation? You may need to emphasize possible penalties if corrections are not made. Common in a fear-driven culture.

• Fulfill the fiscal obligation? You may want to emphasize the costs/benefits. Common in an achievement-driven culture.

• Fulfill the social obligation? You may want to emphasize improved morale, public relations. Common in a humane corporate culture.

Employer motivation will determine the nature of the objections to the recommendations you submit. What are possible objections the decision-maker might raise? Whatever they might be, it's important you understand their motivations so that you are better prepared with responses that satisfy the decision-maker's needs.

• List the possible decision-maker objections.
• List the arguments that are most likely to be successful against those objections.
• As a last resort: Review employer obligations under administrative law.

6. What will be the cost/benefits of corrective actions and system improvements?

• What are the costs that might result if/when OSHA inspects? Answer this question to address the legal obligation your employer has.
• What is the estimated investment required to take corrective action, and how does that contrast with the possible costs if corrective actions are not taken? Answer this question to address the fiscal obligation your employer has.
• What is the "message" sent to the workforce and the community as a result of action or inaction? Answer this question to address the social obligation your employer has.

It's important to have the answers to all of these questions ready for the decision maker.

The maintenance supervisor may be able to help you estimate the investment required for recommended corrective actions.

More ideas to consider:

• These options must also eliminate or reduce the hazards and the exposures;
• Try to include at least three (real world) but only one or two for this exercise;
• Briefly list low/high cost solutions that eliminate the problem now/soon;
• Briefly list low/high cost solutions that reduce the problem now/soon;
• Briefly list the advantages and disadvantages of each solution.

Estimating direct and indirect costs

The direct and indirect accident costs represent the "benefits" if we adopt the recommended actions. The benefits are realized as savings in these costs. The company will not have to pay them out over the foreseeable future. To help estimate direct and indirect costs, you can use OSHA's Safety Pays software. This is an excellent software tool that determines direct and indirect accident costs. It also calculates the business volume required to cover those costs. The data is based on 52,000 lost-time claims submitted to a major workers compensation insurance carrier.

What is the ratio between direct and indirect costs in your scenario?

The indirect costs for accidents will usually be higher than the direct costs. Generally this ratio will be 1.5 or higher. To determine the ratio between the indirect and direct costs, use the following equation:

Let's say an employee injured his hand (requiring surgery) while working around the machinery in our scenario. If the indirect (uninsured) accident cost totals $160,000 and the direct (insured) cost is $40,000, the ratio of indirect to direct costs will be 4:1. This ratio just happens to be the most common or aver ratio between indirect and direct accident costs in the USA.

What is the ratio between total accident costs to direct costs?

This ratio is a little more dramatic than contrasting the indirect costs with direct costs. It helps emphasize the fact that direct costs are actually just the tip of the iceberg. To determine this ratio, use the following equation:

In this case, if the indirect (uninsured) cost totals $160,000 and the direct (insured) cost is $40,000, the ratio of total costs to direct costs will be $200,000/$40,000 = 5:1. What will XYZ have to earn in sales to pay back this lost money? Well, if XYZ has a 5% profit margin, they'll have to earn 20X the total accident cost, or $4 million in sales!!!

What is return on the investment (ROI)?

To determine ROI, it's necessary to estimate the amount of the initial investment required to complete corrective actions and safety system improvements. Once the initial investment is determined, use the equation below to determine ROI.

Let's say our investment to replace to train all employees on lockout/tagout procedures, machine guarding and PPE while working around machinery will be $20,000. If our total accident cost is $200,000, our ROI will be 1000%!!! Now that's a return.

Well, how was that? Pretty tough... but the whole idea is to help you get through the rough parts now, so that you will be able to develop and present an effective recommendation to top management the first time! It is time to take the review quiz, so let's go.

REVIEW QUIZ

This is an open book review quiz. It's important to complete this quiz as some of the final exam questions are derived directly from the questions within this module quiz. Immediately after submitting the quiz, you will receive a web page containing your answers and the correct "book" answers.