Safety Material for the Trucking Industry February 2019
Is Your Safety Incentive Program Counter-Productive?
Most companies care about their employees’ safety and sometimes use games like Safety Bingo or signage that reports safety records, like days without an accident, to encourage safe behavior. However, these well-intentioned incentives don’t always improve safety. In fact, using incentive-based prizes that reward employees for working safely may unintentionally lead employees to suppress injury and illness reporting. Underreporting to win prizes has two harmful side effects:
The requirements If you employ more than 11 workers on a shift you need a safety committee. Smaller employers may choose to have monthly safety meetings instead.
Is there a magic number for membership? There is no magic number or required number, but 6 members seems to be a common recommendation. If the committee gets too large, it’ll be harder to get work done. If you feel you need better representation across departments then you may want to include as many as 10. Keep in mind, that your meeting should last for less than an hour and that time can go by quickly when 10 opinions need to be heard.
If concern over hiring or retaining drivers keeps you up at night, consider developing a mentorship program.
Mentorship is good for the mentor, the mentee and your bottom line.
Choose mentors that are humble, dependable and respected by other drivers. The mentor’s job is to sculpt a new worker into a positive and productive team member. Ask your team to recommend the best person for the job.
Safety climate is the new catch phrase in occupational safety circles. But what is it? And what does it mean to your company? Find out in this training:
This course teaches prevention of common shoulder disorders caused by improperly lowering the landing gear. See which body position is best to avoid an injury.
The Trucking Injury Reduction Emphasis (TIRES) project was developed by the Safety and Health Assessment and Research for Prevention (SHARP) program of Washington's Department of Labor and Industries.
The Trucking Injury Reduction Emphasis (TIRES) project team and the TIRES steering committee are working with the Washington State trucking industry to identify causes for the most frequent injuries to develop effective strategies for preventing them. Free safety training materials are available at KeepTruckingSafe.org.
The TIRES steering committee is made up of a diverse group of professionals that includes: drivers, safety people from large and small trucking companies, labor and business associations, insurers and a representative from a publicly funded truck driving school.
Funded in part by a grant from CDC NIOSH 5 U60 OH 008487. The contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of CDC/NIOSH.