I have a problem at my client. Any advise is appreciated.
They want to increase Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) reporting and discipline. Since I have been promoting Performance Management Systems as a way to create culture and behavior change, the HR Manager has decided to put EHS KPIs into a new, discipline/reward oriented graphic-scale performance appraisal system. This appraisal system, which we call the “Discipline Scorecard”, is only used in the factory; a fact which is creating complaints of unfair standards. But lets put those complaints aside for a moment.
EHS in the factory must be promoted and enforced by the line supervisors and Production Manager. They must use the Discipline Scorecard to deduct points from workers who create EHS issues. I call this a “punishment policy”. Additionally, it is the primary job of the Vice General Manager and is considered very important by the Labor Union representative, both of whom actively monitor the factory. There is an EHS specialist who does training and consulting, and, until recently, there was an EHS manager (a shared resource between several business units on the site). However, although there is a lot of support and attention to EHS, no EHS program, training, or tracking will be effective without self-monitoring and reporting of the Operators themselves.
And here is the problem. If an Operator reports an EHS problem he created, he gets dinged. If his supervisor reports the problem, he also gets dinged. Guess where this is going?
From the point of view of all the management, they want to reach a quantitative goal for EHS reports and incidents. That’s a management goal which comes from HQ. But what we really want to do is reduce EHS incidents for the sake of protecting workers and improving our work conditions. I’m thinking about recommending that EHS problems should go unpunished when an Operator reports it. Or, at the least, figure out some sort of scoring mechanic which will promote self-reporting of EHS issues.
Does anyone have any idea on how to solve this problem? Or, does anyone have ideas on how to use the Performance Management system to increase self-reporting of issues which would usually require punishments?
2 Responses to “How would you design “punishment policy” to promote self-reporting?”
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Maybe it is possible to create a distinction between ‘acts’ and ‘incidents’ where you punish the unsafe act that is deliberately done, or done against the policy/rules of the company.
There will be many cases, especially if the system is new, or hasn’t been enforced too hard in the past that are residual incidents – traditional or common tasks from the past.
You could hold a moratorium on punishment, get everyone used to complying through re-inforcement in meetings (have EHS the first agenda item in every meeting in the company to raise it’s profile), issuing notices at the location of the offense (such as pouring oil in the drain), build ‘disposal and safe usage’ into the production SOI’s, have the GM talk about incidents that are ‘main offenders’ (not mentioning names of departments) and reinvigorate the EHS message across the whole site but focus on the ‘gray areas’.
Once you have ‘overall’ compliance, you can ‘punish’ individuals that flout the laws, because everyone has ‘bought into’ the EHS message.
I sort of see it as a chicken and egg problem. All “acts” occur essentially because someone is not taking responsibility. The issue is, there are meetings. But there is little punishment in place. How do you get buy-in when there are no consequences to actions?