Most marketing and communication departments know all too well that social media and social networking sites are a treasure trove of opportunity for elevating your personal or corporate brand. Employees use social media for personal use, but also use it as a forum to talk about their boss, their company, their products, their problems and whatever else is on their mind. There are 200 plus social media sites in English alone, Facebook recently reached one billion users, and Twitter puts out more than 170 million tweets per day. That is a lot of free advertising!

However, what many businesses fail to remember is that, despite all of the positive aspects social media brings to a firm's marketing, communication, and sales efforts, it's also ripe with opportunity to damage their brand and cause a financial loss. While it's free marketing, it's also a lot of unedited content being published online that could be about your business, about your products, or attributed to you. Could a competitor feel that your employees are slandering their people or products? Could a competitor gain inside information about your organization? Could an employee divulge information that could get them fired? Could you or your employees inadvertently offend prospects and clients? In short, yes. As social media use continues to evolve and grow, it's important to consider this exposure to your organization.

Using Social Media To Generate Business Leads
All of this can be scary, but you can't ignore the great opportunities created by social media. Any organization not taking advantage of social media sites is signaling that it is not evolving with the times, and there is nothing close to matching the immediacy of broadcasting your news through social networking sites. A well-crafted social media strategy can generate a lot of interest in your product or services and drive traffic to your website where more specific information can be provided.

"In time, the proper execution of a focused social media strategy is an efficient means of staying in front of prospects. When the prospect has a business problem, your positioning as a credible, knowledgeable resource can help you get in the door and, hopefully, close the deal," says Randy Stoloff, Director of Marketing and Social Media at AmWINS Group Benefits in Warwick, Rhode Island.

It is critical to have all content reviewed by someone within your organization that can be responsible for stopping improper content from being released. It's also important to review applicable insurance policies such as a website media policy or cyberliability policy to be sure social media activities are covered.

Using Social Media For Crisis Response
Imagine a time down the road when your best customers follow your social media feed and you need to get news out in a hurry about something that could cause your most prized customers harm. Assuming you have or hire qualified public relations professionals that can help you craft the proper way to phrase the announcement, you can get important news out immediately to show your concern for your customers and for transparency. Social media provides the most immediate way to communicate to your target audience. There are many insurance products currently available that assist with handling the public relations aspect of a crisis response. Having your social media presence established prior to a crisis will help you deal with the crisis in a targeted fashion.

Can Social Media Sites Be A Network Security Risk?
Besides the potential for hackers to use employee information on social media sites to figure out passwords, the sites can also be used to transmit computer viruses and other dangerous malware. As a result, many corporations block employee access to social networking sites. If the corporation has a cyberliability insurance policy in place, be sure it addresses security issues emanating from social media. The coverage may be limited to networks owned or controlled by the corporation.

Should I Address Social Media In My Employee Handbook?
This is a topic that requires legal counsel with experience in employment law as well as social media. It makes sense as a business owner to establish a guideline on what social media activities are permissible for employees, but it must be carefully worded. The National Labor Relations Board has published guidelines that may help. Most companies work very hard to establish a professional image and reputation. Employees often mistakenly think that commenting in social networking sites is somehow exempt from personal responsibility. The press is full of examples of disgruntled employees commenting on working conditions, complaining about their managers or coworkers, or commenting on confidential internal activities. Employees have been terminated for their conduct and they've sued for wrongful termination. You are likely to find coverage for the wrongful termination claims on your employment practices liability (EPL) insurance policy. Working with a professional is critical for navigating this minefield. You may not be able to avoid the litigation, but you can lay the groundwork for an effective defense.

Do I Need A Social Media Component In My Employment Contracts For My Executives?
Your top executives can also make mistakes using social media. Sensitive information can be leaked out accidentally by people who see the most sensitive information. Similar to non-executive employees, managers who have been terminated due to their social media activities have sued their employers for wrongful termination. Again, look to an EPL policy for coverage for that type of claim.

Should I Review The Social Media Content Posted By Job Applicants?
Many states have enacted laws barring employers from requesting full access to an applicant's social media profile. We have all heard stories about a prospective employer seeing improper pictures or comments by the applicant which influence the decision to hire or not hire them. Some employers have taken it one step further and requested login credentials from job applicants in order to see all the content they have posted. It seems like an obvious invasion of privacy, so laws are being written to protect the rights of job seekers. The claims that can arise from this scenario could have coverage apply under the "wrongful failure to hire" coverage on an employment practices policy, as well as an "invasion of privacy" policy as part of a cyberliability policy.

Scared Yet?
There are reasons to be concerned, but the opportunities need to be investigated with a proper foundation of preparation. It is also important to remember that there are insurance products available to help protect you after missteps. If you have an employment practices liability policy, you likely have some protection from wrongful termination claims and invasion of privacy claims brought by your employees. If you have an internet media or cyberliability policy, you could have remedies for allegations of libel, slander, defamation and invasion of privacy claims brought by other parties. A strong cyberliability policy will have protection from breach of security claims if hackers use social media to access your computer network for malicious purposes. It's possible that other insurance products can offer assistance as well. AmWINS represents multiple insurers with all of these insurance products and can help you select the proper coverage for you and your clients.

Tell the truth. What are your real expectations for your safety management program? "Let's be honest," said one exasperated business owner. "I'd be happy if it only got my workers to do what they're supposed to do in the first place."

If compliance is your answer, go to the back of the line.

Why settle for so little when the potential exists for much more? Safety management programs can be designed to solve a myriad of problems facing businesses, not just compliance. High personnel turnover, generational and cultural conflicts, and non-productive employee behaviors can all be reduced through safety management, but only if more attention is paid to the "human elements" that cause a loss to happen.

Perhaps the darker truth is that we haven't capitalized on the full potential of safety management efforts because we haven't known how to properly "gear them up" — to organize and "sell" them to oft-resistant workers in a way that achieves maximum benefit.

Failure to Launch
Tim Reis, Global Director Data Governance at The Manitowoc Company, thinks he knows why many programs struggle. Midway through the implementation of Manitowoc's five-year safety management system plan, Reis found that engaging employees in the roll-out effort was more critical to its success than initially believed.

"We spent two years putting good processes in place and establishing accountability," said Reis, adding that the success of additional stages of his safety management plan "will be dependent on our ability to make good processes excellent and our ability to engage employees."

Unfortunately, many companies discover Reis' lesson too late, having launched safety management programs without taking the necessary first steps to engage employees.

Predictable Resistance
Resistance to ill-conceived safety implementation plans is predictable. But until recently, the source of worker resistance has been a subject of intelligent guesswork. Anthony Lauchner, a senior project manager with McCarthy Building Companies, blames the independent nature of workers.

"I figure that guys whose independent attitude isn't accepted in other industries naturally gravitate to my industry," said Lauchner. "Historically, we've accepted them, allowing them to get away with an attitude that works against safety improvement."

The search for solutions to change-resistant workers has been prolific, if not futile. One operations manager even consulted a program for troubled youth to find guidance in handling workers he considered to be little more than grown-up juvenile delinquents.

Fortunately, we now know how specific temperamental, generational and cultural factors contribute to resistance in workers. This knowledge provides us with three strategies for starting successful safety management programs. Use of these strategies results in a deeper acceptance of safety efforts and reaps benefits far beyond simple worker compliance.

1. Overcome a Temperament of Resistance
Safety management programs should be geared to overcome the historical root cause of worker resistance: emotional apathy that breeds disloyalty.

Due in part to my extensive research of the personality traits and behavioral tendencies of change-resistant workers, we now know that the independent nature of workers is symptomatic of emotional withdrawal, not outward belligerence (as it might appear).

Nervousness, pessimism, indifference, inhibition and an argumentative nature are all traits for which resistant workers consistently rate themselves as needing improvement. These traits are indicative of an emotional hole into which workers retreat, escaping from emotional investment in the job or with coworkers.

Anthony Lauchner labels it a temporary work mentality. Others call it a penchant for disloyal behavior, the type that ruins safety management programs and is reflected in high personnel turnover rates.

While serving as project manager and safety liaison for Jacobs Facilities, Gary Douthitt witnessed the detrimental effects that the emotional hole had on his safety management system for project managers. When tasked with collaborating with contractors to identify safety hazards, Douthitt's managers didnt seem to care.

"It was easier for them to note conditions on their report and walk on rather than stop and deal with unsafe behaviors on the spot," said Douthitt.

As old fashioned as it sounds, building safety systems on care and compassion rather than command is the solution for bridging the emotional gap between workers and safety.

One way that owners and managers can demonstrate the compassion of safety management is obvious. "Don't fire workers when they take the time to do the job safely," says Lauchner. By exercising safety patience, he says, the company will convince the employee that safety management is a noteworthy emotional investment, equal to production.

Owners may also want to provide training that develops interpersonal communication skills to those responsible for the program's implementation. Gruff, authoritative communication only pushes workers further into emotional regression, away from safety management objectives.

2. Appeal to Generation Me
Consider the radical difference in values separating young workers from older ones when initiating a safety management program.

The egocentric nature of Generations X and Y, known collectively as Gen Me (approximately ages eighteen to thirty-five), represent serious obstacles to a safety program. According to reliable measures, narcissism, the unhealthy over-focus on self, is seven times higher in Gen Me as in previous generations.

Jean M. Twenge, Ph.D. of San Diego State University states in her book Generation Me, "Young people have been consistently taught to put their own needs first and to focus on feeling good about themselves," adding, "I see no evidence that today's young people feel much attachment to duty or group cohesion."

In short, Gen Me does not naturally possess a mindset that lends itself to a collaborative safety management program.

To secure "buy in" from a generation not keen on placing the group's needs over the individuals, a safety program needs to harness the power of Gen Me's self-focus. Oddly, this can be achieved by appealing to the inflated sense of self-esteem they feel when networking socially.

Such networking abilities are crucial to the success of safety management. Toolbox talks, Job Safety Analyses (JSAs), and team incident investigations are a few of the safety management tools that are dependent upon good socialization skills. Due to the emotional withdrawal syndrome discussed earlier, older workers have been historically weak in this skill set.

Companies should target its present and future Gen Me leaders for special inclusion in the planning and implementation of safety management programs. This includes taking seriously their opinions on how to sell the program to other Gen Me workers as well as taking advantage of their technologically advanced interpersonal communication skills.

3. Capitalize on Present Cultural Change
In order for safety management to achieve maximum impact, safety managers should better accommodate the cultural sea change brought by an increasing number of Hispanic workers. The construction industry is one example of this influx.

According to a 2011 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report, Hispanic workers account for 24.4 percent of all construction workers (roughly 2.2 million workers). Two of every three construction new hires are Hispanic, and the percentage is expected to increase.

While most construction supervisors identify the language barrier as their primary cultural safety concern, my research indicates that the difference between Hispanic and non-Hispanic on-the-job behavioral tendencies poses the greatest threat to the success of safety management programs.

Behavioral data I have collected from 750 non-Hispanic construction supervisors demonstrates that over 76 percent of those workers classify themselves as more task-oriented than people-oriented. On the other hand, Hispanic supervisors are equally more people-oriented than task-focused.

Project manager Lauchner agrees. "My non-Hispanic workers are more hard-driven, less forgiving than my Hispanic ones," he says. "By nature, Hispanics on my crews are equally hard workers but more willing to listen and be team players."

While the "steady Eddy" nature of Hispanic workers is well-suited to the goal of safety compliance, some feel their lack of aggressiveness is a liability. One owner of a drywall installation company told me that he wishes more Hispanics would naturally step into leadership roles because they are better at enforcing his company's safety message with other Hispanics.

Building proactive safety leadership qualities in Hispanics while educating non-Hispanics to the significant upside of their people skills, is a key to gearing up an all-inclusive safety management program. As with Gen Me, safety managers should target in advance key Hispanic line workers who can advise the company on how to best engage others in implementing the program. Training these workers with better leadership skills yields a safety return on investment that improves a significantly growing sector of America's industrial workforce.

A Perspective Long Overdue
Moving beyond the days of the wishful hopes of worker compliance demands a radical change to traditional safety management thinking. Generational, cultural and temperamental factors once given afterthought now stand as earmarks of whether a safety management system is fully engaging workers, thus reaching its peak potential.

Frank E. Bird, Jr., and George L. Germain, authors of Practical Loss Control Leadership, must have envisioned this day when they developed their famous loss causation model. They suggest that we examine two main categories to determine the basic causes of loss: job factors (systems and standards) and personal factors (humans).

After years of gearing up safety management programs that are focused primarily on systems and standards compliance, it is the personal factors of culture, age and personality that now show us a better way to achieve total safety.

Over the next few days, you're going to read a number of comparisons between the current Hurricane Sandy and August 2011's Hurricane Irene. Firestorm urges you to read and take these comparisons seriously, as Irene killed 56 people with US costs upwards of $15.6 billion in damages. The total damages are still being felt.

Sandy, sadly, has the potential to be "the Perfect Storm." Some meteorologists say a rare combination of events — Hurricane Sandy combined with an outbreak of unseasonably cold air, and a strong land-based storm system — could deliver flooding rains, damaging winds of near-hurricane force, large waves, and even heavy snow inland.

This Public Discussion details meteorological observations as of 5PM Thursday evening, 10/25:

"...Later in the period ... some re-intensification is shown as Sandy deepens again off the U.S. East Coast while it interacts with another shortwave trough. Regardless ... Sandy is expected to be a large cyclone at or near hurricane intensity through most of the forecast period.

"... Sandy will be pulled northwestward and slow down on Friday while it interacts with the upper-level low. Then a north-northeastward acceleration is expected by Saturday as a long-wave trough move into the eastern United States. Most of the track models now show a turn back toward the northwest by the end of the period due to Sandy interacting with an amplifying shortwave trough over the Carolinas and mid Atlantic states. However ... there remain some significant differences in the timing of this interaction ... as the ECMWF has Sandy farther west and interacting with the shortwave sooner relative to most of the rest of the guidance ... which shows a wider turn and a track farther north. The new NHC forecast is close to the previous one ... and lies roughly between the ECMWF and the GFS ensemble mean. Regardless of the exact track of Sandy ... it is likely that significant impacts will be felt over portions of the U.S. East Coast through the weekend and into early next week."

Firestorm's Jim Satterfield states:

"While Sandy's pattern is similar to last year's hurricane, the water temperature is lower and wind impact may be less. Even given lower winds, flooding is extremely likely and combined with down trees and the possibility of ice, loss of power is expected as the hurricane moves inland. For businesses, now is the time to reconfirm call in numbers and messaging. The European model shows that Sandy has the potential to become a massive storm. If this model is correct, outages could be in days and even weeks."

Rainfall Potential

As reported by the Associated Press, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said he expected to receive by Friday from the state's major utility companies, emergency plans for how they will deal with the storm.

The utilities came under intense criticism last year following widespread and long-lasting power outages caused by the remnants of Hurricane Irene in August and a surprise October snowstorm.

Asked during his monthly "Ask the Governor" show on WTKK-FM if he expected utilities to be more prepared for this storm, Patrick responded: "They'd better be."

Patrick signed a law earlier this year that requires utilities to dramatically improve communications with their customers during emergencies. Many residents and municipal officials in areas hard-hit by last year's storm complained that they were unable to get accurate information from companies about when power might be restored.

The law requires the utilities to establish call centers that would be staffed around the clock after major storms to handle inquiries from customers about power restoration. Failure of any investor-owned utility to carry out an order by the chairman (authorized under section 4B of the General Laws of the Commonwealth CHAPTER 25 DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC UTILITIES) shall be subject to investigation and a penalty of up to $1,000,000 per violation.

In a statement from Governor Andrew M. Cuomo on the NY-Alert website, the Governor directed the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services to closely monitor the progress of Hurricane Sandy and prepare for potential storm impacts. Although the storm track is still uncertain, Hurricane Sandy has the potential to affect many parts of New York State with a variety of threats, including heavy rain, high winds, flooding, tornadoes, coastal surges, and widespread power outages.

"I have directed state agencies and New York's emergency operations personnel to begin preparations now for the potential impact of Hurricane Sandy," Governor Cuomo said. "I urge all New Yorkers to closely track the storm's path, using local radio and television or online reports. We will actively monitor the storm's progress and take any steps necessary to protect our state's residents."

Connecticut Light & Power (CL&P) is hiring 2,000 contractors from the Midwest and United Illuminating is hiring hundreds of workers to help respond to Sandy if the storm hits the state. CL&P provides power to more than a million residences and businesses, and is warning its residential customers to prepare a home emergency kit and has begun reaching out to local officials to update them on how the company will respond if there are widespread power outages.

In Maryland, Baltimore County government is holding an emergency preparedness press conference at 1:30 p.m. Friday, in which county emergency personnel will update residents on response plans and Baltimore Gas and Electric Vice President for Corporate Communications Rob Gould will detail the utility company's preparedness plans.

Businesses Should Prepare Now
Firestorm Solutions, a nationally recognized leader in Continuity Planning, Critical Decision Support, Crisis Response, Crisis Management, Crisis Communications, Crisis Public Relations, and Consequence Management, urges businesses to review business continuity plans, and to communicate with employees and vendors to prepare for labor shortages, supply chain interruptions, power and technology systems back-ups, and other critical system and process interruptions:

• Recovery prioritization structure for critical business functions
• Response and recovery actions by functional department
• Identification of critical suppliers
• Identification of key employees and contacts

The crisis management team should include the CEO, senior officers, and key personnel representing operations, security, marketing, human resources and public information. The senior business continuity officer and his staff facilitate the crisis management discussion and decision making.

Depending on the severity of the crisis, a command center is set up including PC's, white boards, and phone lines. As status information flows into the command center, it is useful to record it on the white board for the crisis team to see at a glance.

'

Roles and Responsibilities in a Crisis

• Human Resources is charged with updating employee information phone recordings and web site with status and instructions.
• The security officer should communicate with fire and law enforcement, if necessary.
• Marketing should develop customer communications, and public information should craft carefully worded statements for the media/social media outlets.
• It is imperative that media inquiries be referred to an experienced, designated spokesperson.
• The secretary to the board or CEO should inform directors, when appropriate.
• The command center is staffed around the clock, and team members are rotated until the crisis passes and full recovery is completed.

Time is of the essence in crisis management, and it deserves its own plan specifying participant responsibilities. A measure of success is that the dimensions of the crisis are known and recovery activities are begun within the first few hours. In the absence of a tested crisis management plan, the crisis management process can be a turbulent and reactive instead of a calm and productive experience.

Incident/Emergency Response Plan
Implementing an emergency response plan enables a timely response to a disruptive event, with the objective of protecting people and property, while enabling an efficient recovery effort that satisfies stakeholder expectations. Firestorm's Emergency Response Team, which can be reached at 800.321.2219, is available to assist with:

• Establishing emergency response objectives and assumptions.
• Developing emergency response team roles and responsibilities.
• Identifying primary / alternate assignments.
• Collecting emergency response team contact information and documenting call tree procedures.
• Designing a triggering process, escalation criteria and declaration criteria; establishing and documenting authority levels.
• Documenting actions by phases, disruption or crisis for incident response at the impacted site.
• Documenting or attaching evacuation and shelter-in-place procedures.
• Developing and documenting response procedures that align to the emergency response objectives and assumptions; developing processes to enable recovery procedures.
• Establishing and documenting communications strategies to internal and external resources/ stakeholders; summarizing media handling procedures; documenting crisis communications holding statements.
• Creating a damage assessment process and assigning personnel.

For Business Preparedness
The Firestorm Hurricane Sandy Business Crisis Management Response Team is available now at 800.321.2219.

For Individual Preparedness
Firestorm offers its eBook at no charge: Disaster Ready People for a Disaster Ready America.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
William Shakespeare

Cheech and Chong had a funny comedy routine built around the concept, "If it looks like s%!#, if it smells like s%!#, it's got to be s%!#." A similar sentiment is conveyed by the modern version of an 18th century expression: "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." And like putting lipstick on a pig, many agency owners try to make producers out of employees simply by giving them the title "producer." Even if these employees are not producing, they are given the title "producer" — and voilà! they are magically producers!

Once that title has been bestowed, agency owners will often go to great lengths to rationalize their producers' lack of success. In some agencies, the rationalization is so obvious it reminds me of Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon sign-off where all the children are above average (which is an obvious impossibility). It's as if once the title is given, the owners have to convince themselves their producers are successful. Agency owners will rely on conversations they've had with people who know nothing about the situation and they will use the wrong benchmarks to prove their producers are above average. If the situation is really bad, they start giving their producers call-in and walk-in business. Then they give their producers business their customer service representatives (CSRs) can handle on their own. Then they give them house business. Then they give them personal lines books.

When agency owners start giving their producers the CSRs' business, they'll often rationalize it as, "It'll free up time for the CSRs." For what? To service more new business the producers are not producing? When agency owners start giving them their own business, they'll rationalize it as, "It'll free up more of my time." To do what? Rarely have I seen 55-65 year old agency owners give away chunks of their book and then replace it with all new sales. It happens, but rarely. Or another rationalization is, "They just need more experience working with clients." What have they been doing the last 10 years?

I've also found it interesting how many of these same agency owners want their agencies valued high, like a high performance agency. But high performance agencies have producers who can sell. Rather than hiding behind a false title, doesn't it make more sense to manage people better? Doesn't it make more sense to give people appropriate titles? This means giving the title "producer" only to people who do produce.

A problem with a generic title is it carries expectations and cost. No agency is going to achieve true success until the owners recognize and accept reality. If their producers cannot produce, they should not be producers. Even if the agency cannot find anyone who can produce, very often the better solution is to leave the position open. A huge number of agency owners though will never accept reality, so the opportunities for those who do get this point are great. For those willing to try, a good place to begin is by recognizing and accepting that not all producers are created equal, and the differences are great, not small.

Next, recognize and accept that people with very different talents and skill sets should have different titles and pay scales. Let's get past political correctness and deal with reality. Just because that's the way it has always been is not a legitimate reason for not changing things going forward. The fact that producers may be paid commission rather than salary is no excuse either because it ignores the following realities:

1. Many producers, especially poor producers, are paid a salary whether the agency calls it that or not.
2. Many producers, especially poor producers, are given business upon which they earn commissions.
3. Agencies have de facto fixed costs to cover, and producers have to generate enough of their own sales to cover those costs.

A first string quarterback makes more than a second string quarterback. This fact does not mean the backup quarterback is not important, just not as important. So why pay producers as if they all have the same importance to the agency? Why give a $100,000 producer the same title as a $1,000,000 producer? Why give them the same perks? Are you afraid of hurting their egos? How much is this worth to you?

The agencies that get this are doing much better in this economy than those that do not. The agency owners that understand this reality have historically saved enough money (by not wasting it on producers who cannot produce) so they can afford to continue to hire people who can produce. Their morale is higher because everyone in the agency is contributing and their higher morale contributes further to their success. Even when a producer who cannot produce tries hard to produce, morale is still injured because everyone sees the person is in the wrong position. This employee can only come into work with a great attitude for so long.

This does not mean a producer who can't produce is not valuable as a servicing producer or account manager. (Do not let any biases cause you to make the wrong decision just because the "producer" is male.) An agency can be successful with just servicing producers, but the model and cost structure must change.

Agency owners that get this have defined clearly what a producer is in their agencies. They do not give the same title to employees based on what they should do, but based on what they actually achieve. To me, a producer produces at least $300,000 of his or her own commissions. It is inappropriate to call an experienced person who produces less than this a producer. Such a distinction pays huge dividends, including the ability to attract better people to the agency. Who wants to go to work at an agency where the future is limited because the producers can't produce? It is so much more fun to work on a winning team.

Title your people with appropriate titles. Don't let wishful thinking get in the way. Manage reality and success will follow.

(hint: the key to lower health care and absence costs isn't about health)

When medical and disability costs are high, conventional wisdom assumes there must be more illness driving up costs, right? But how much of total cost can we actually attribute to health status versus other factors?

Four components contribute to health and absence costs. It may surprise some readers to learn that health status is not as powerful a predictor of cost as one might expect. Research from nearly two million employees and their families across the US shows that a shockingly small amount of the variation in health care costs can be attributed to health status alone.

This article describes how each of four components independently influences cost when all the others are held constant. The first two components contributing to medical costs and absence involve "non-modifiable" costs that cannot easily be influenced or changed, while the second two parts involve costs we consider to be "modifiable."

The results come from a sophisticated statistical analysis of health and absence data, along with hundreds of other variables about the companies, workers and jobs (1).

Part I: Basic Needs And Bad Luck
Could health care and disability costs actually go to zero if we had a very young, generally healthy population? Clearly no. To explore the possibility though, we constructed a model that would approximate such a population. We selected characteristics that correlate with lower costs. We took a young (late 20s), mostly male, single (not having children), highly-educated, highly-paid workforce, in a region known for low-cost care, with all benefit policies and business practices aligned for optimal use of benefits.

Can you guess what it would cost to cover the health care spending of this virtually risk-free group? Our data say it is somewhere near $1,300 on average per year. Some costs would be associated with basic needs and some would be the result of misfortune due to genetics or accidents. As you might expect, the majority in this population would have very small expenditures, with a few high outliers. One can debate whether this number is valid because it is virtually impossible to have a population this young, highly-paid, in a specific region, and with a specific gender and marital-status profile. However, it was never intended to be an achievable situation, just the lowest imaginable.

So, the lowest imaginable total for Part I: $1,300 per adult person per year.

Part II: Demographics And Labor Market Face it, age matters and our bodies wear out. Where we live and the type of work we do also matter.

To explain how demographics and labor market affect cost, figure, on average:

• Older workers spend more on health than younger workers;
• Women cost more than men (at least up to a certain age);
• Lower education and lower salary correlate with higher medical and absence costs; and
• Health care in some regions costs more (North East) than others (Rocky Mountain).

Companies naturally hire a workforce with the skills and characteristics needed for the services and products they produce. One company might attract an older, mostly female, less-educated workforce who will earn minimum wage in Missisippi. Another might attract highly-skilled, younger, male engineers in Boston. Because most companies tend to have a consistent labor market to choose from, and because the demographics of those hired rarely involve drastic changes in type of workers, level of pay, or location, we consider the "Demographics and Labor Market" part of cost to be largely non-modifiable.¹

To illustrate the impact of this component, a company in New England with an average employee age of 40 and hourly workers making $40,000 per year would be expected, other components kept equal, to add another $1,700 per employee above the basic ($1,300) amount from Part I. The same group aged 60 years would be expected to have $3,400 per employee due to demographics and labor pool.

Non-Modifiable Total
These two components can vary, as we see, from under $1,300 in our "lowest cost" situation (the young, male 20-somethings), to $4,700 for the aging group. In a typical large company, the non-modifiable total often sits in the $2,500 to $3,500 range. However, full costs for these companies often range from under $4,000 to almost $7,000 per person per year! If basic costs, bad luck, labor pool and demographics only account for about 60%, where does the rest of the cost come from?

Modifiable Parts
By modifiable, we mean something that can be altered by the individual, and/or influenced by the employer. Above, we categorized demographics as non-modifiable because you cannot change them unless you change who you hire or where you locate your company. Modifiable factors are those you can theoretically change in the people you already have.

Part III: Health Status
In general, when health declines, costs go up. Naturally, we put this component in the "modifiable" section of cost, because each of us can decide to what degree we avoid risk and protect our health.

Once again, to isolate the influence of health, the analysis held constant basic needs, bad luck, demographics, and labor pool factors described above. The results indicate that a 10% improvement in health will influence and reduce costs by about the same proportion, between 7-11%.

In other words:

• A 10% improvement in self-reported health status (a 10% shift to a higher score on a scale of poor to excellent) correlated with combined medical and disability cost decrease of approximately the same amount, 9%.
• A 10% decrease in the number of diagnoses people have correlated to a medical and disability cost difference of 11%.
• A 10% decrease in the number of medications people receive resulted in a medical and absence cost difference of 7%.

For those who want a more technical explanation ... these analytic models tell us that when health-related metrics indicate a population is 10% healthier, they will be about 10% less costly. If the population is 20% healthier, we would expect them to be 20% less costly.

Let's do the math. If a group has non-modifiable costs (from Part I & II) of around $4,500 per employee, their total costs could be $4,050 — 10% less — if they had 10% better health status than average people of that age, gender, or location, etc.

On one hand, this validates what we all know: if we live healthy lifestyles and avoid many of the preventable illnesses we develop as we age, we will feel better and cost less. On the other hand, if improving health status by 10% would reduce costs by about 10%, what else might a company do to manage costs?

Part IV: Business Practices
The final component of health care and absence costs is often overlooked: business practices. They are both modifiable and significant. What are they? Business practices are the entire set of employee policies and practices captured in everyone's workplace environment and employment contract — such as how compensation works, how health benefits are structured, how time off is allotted, how employees are trained and managed, etc. More often than not, these factors have a stronger influence on cost than health status. However, the magnitude of business practices' influence on employee behavior catches most people off-guard.

The bottom line: business practices can have three times the impact on cost as health status.

If business practices matter so much, why haven't we heard about them before?

Actually, you probably have, just not in combination. Most of these effects are well-documented.

• Actuaries have decades of evidence showing the impact of deductibles and copayments; however, they are usually seen as differences in cost-sharing arrangements rather than behavioral incentives (2, 3).
• Management and compensation journals highlight many ways in which financial or other rewards impact worker performance and withdrawal, i.e. absence (4, 5).
• Risk-management professionals understand that worker satisfaction influences the rate of accident and injury (6).
• Disability carriers clearly understand the relationship between insurance policy design (i.e., salary reimbursement) and the rate of claim submission (7).
• Experts in talent development know what sorts of advancement opportunities help an organization keep and motivate its top workers.
• Health economists have documented the use-it-or-lose it phenomenon of both sick leave and annual deductibles (8, 9).

The evidence is everywhere, but each piece of it typically remains stuck in separate fields. Because this information is so seldom captured and integrated from so many different sources, the impact of independent cost drivers has been nearly impossible to measure, until now.

Economics Tell Us That Incentives Matter
Simply put, if we align business practices such that employees can earn more rewards for being more productive and get extra value by avoiding absences, both are more likely to happen, no matter what the health status of the group. On the contrary, if employees perceive little reward for higher productivity and have to take absence days in order to avoid "losing" them, workers are more likely to be absent, regardless of their overall health status.

Thus, the full array of business practices, including aligned compensation, benefit design, training, and management practices can influence health care and disability costs by as much as 30% or 40% compared to misaligned business practices. Remember, improving health status (Part III) by 10% only produces a 10% cost improvement opportunity.

A typical example is shown in the figure below where medical and absence costs are separated along the lines of the categories discussed above. This is a hypothetical company having typical business practices commonly seen in large corporations. As expected, there is a significant cost component attributed to Basic Costs and Workforce Demographics (Parts I & II). Also notice that there is potential to reduce costs through a 10% health status improvement (Part III). But of critical importance, our models indicate that the vast majority of their modifiable costs, which account for 39% overall, are attributable to their business practices (28%).

While the effect of business practices may seem large, in some cases up to 40%, recall that we are talking about a combination of many different business practices. In the RAND health insurance experiment, the effect of a larger deductible by itself was a 40% difference in medical costs (2). Here the category of business practices includes all policies and incentives governing health care coverage, paid time-off, compensation, disability, training, retirement and other factors. Given the cumulative influence of all these incentives combined, we should not be surprised that their sum is dramatic.

Which business practices matter most? The truth is they act in combination because they are interrelated in fundamental ways. The easy answer is that we need to align them all. But which one is most important for a given organization depends on what they are already doing right. Compensation design influences benefit use, absence policies influence medical costs, training practices influence turnover, and so on. In other words: cost drivers that are sometimes considered to be non-modifiable (in the sense that they are immutable) are really influenced by the modus operandi (management practices) of the business and therefore can be modified.

Indeed there is evidence about specific business, such as:

• PTO plans and buy-back plans (versus strict sick leave) improve attendance (10).
• Variable pay plans improve retention (11), absence and benefits use (12).
• High deductibles combined with fully-funded HSA plans reduce costs and improve health protection (10).

Also, our research confirms that aligned business practices are predictive not only of benefit costs, but also productivity and turnover.

All aspects of human capital management are connected. How you reward, train, and manage people has a stronger effect on health care costs, absence, and productivity than many people think. Business practices are a critical consideration that points to affordable solutions that have a demonstrable effect on business performance. Further, if a company's sole strategy for controlling medical and disability costs is focused on health improvement or value-based purchasing strategies, the largest potential for cost savings will be missed.

Employers invest billions of dollars in health improvement and health management to try to control costs, yet many overlook an even larger opportunity to reduce benefit costs by aligning incentives with their business practices in ways that do not require additional investments. Ignoring such obvious opportunities leaves huge potential for business performance unrealized.

¹ This brief discussion focuses only on "demand-side" components of cost; it does not address how the supply-side (meaning differences across providers) affects costs, although this phenomenon is very real. To some degree it is included in regional differences, but it must be acknowledged as a factor not included here.

References

1. Lynch W, Gardner H. Who Survives? How Benefit Costs are Killing Your Company. Cheyenne, Wyoming: Health as Human Capital Foundation; 2011.
2. Newhouse JP. Free for all? Lessons from the RAND Health Insurance Experiment: Harvard University Press; 1996.
3. Manning WG, Newhouse JP, Duan N, Keeler EB, Leibowitz A, Marquis MS. Health insurance and the demand for medical care: evidence from a randomized experiment. The American economic review. 1987;77(3):251-77. Epub 1987/05/10.
4. Lazear EP. Performance Pay and Productivity. American Economic Review. 2000;90(5):1346-61.
5. Trevor CO, Gerhart B, Boudreau JW. Voluntary turnover and job performance: curvilinearity and the moderating influences of salary growth and promotions. J Appl Psychol. 1997;82(1):44-61.
6. Butler RJ, Johnson WG, Cote P. It pays to be nice: employer-worker relationships and the management of back pain claims. J Occup Environ Med. 2007;49(2):214-25. Epub 2007/02/13.
7. Lynch WD, Gardner HH. Blog 3.2: Money matters in decisions about disability. Aligning Incentives, Information, and Choice: How to Optimize Health and Human Capital Performance. Cheyenne, Wyoming: Health as Human Capital Foundation; 2008. p. 78-9.
8. Keeler EB, Rolph JE. The demand for episodes of treatment in the health insurance experiment. Journal of health economics. 1988;7(4):337-67.
9. Ehrenberg RG, Ehrenberg RA, Rees DI, Ehrenberg EL. School District Leave Policies, Teacher Absenteeism, and Student Achievement. Journal of Human Resources. 1991;26(1):72-105.
10. Lynch WD, Gardner HH. Blog 8.3: PTO Banks and health savings accounts---small steps toward shared economic incentives. Aligning Incentives, Information, and Choice: How to Optimize Health and Human Capital Performance. Cheyenne, Wyoming: Health as Human Capital Foundation; 2008. p. 212-6.
11. Lynch W. A study of what makes high performers stay. Entry 10. Health as Human Capital Foundation Blog [Internet]. 2006. Available from: http://www.hcmsgroup.com/2006/05/.
12. Lynch W. Aligning Incentives: What do bonuses have to do with reducing absence? More than you might think. Entry 2 Health as Human Capital Foundation Blog [Internet]. 2008. Available from: http://www.hcmsgroup.com/2008/01/.

Within a certain part of Italy that mints its own coins and has a standing army outfitted in designer togs from Michelangelo, when one makes a mistake, the correct and only exclamation is Mea Culpa. Well actually it's more like Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa — but even Italians are known to abbreviate their Latin for the sake of expediency. That's my mantra this week after last week's post on Medical Gluttony. In that article we highlighted a new book by Dr. Otis Webb Brawley — How We Do Harm: A Doctor Breaks Ranks About Being Sick in America — in which he characterized portions of our healthcare delivery system as gluttonous. In all fairness, doctors and providers are most definitely not alone in their greed. I never said they were — but I tend to err on the Italian side of life when it comes to my public Mea Culpa's.

This week it's time to turn our attention to another form of healthcare malfeasance — a form of Payer Gluttony. By the time we're done with our mini series on gluttony, we'll likely get to include Pharma Gluttony, Political Gluttony and possibly some other gluttonies as yet to be uncovered. It's no wonder our system is $3 trillion per year and represents 18% of GDP. In their landmark study from 2008 — The Price of Excess — PWC estimated that roughly half of our healthcare spending is completely wasted. The real question remains — is it truly wasted — or is this just the biggest trough America has ever built?

Like most of healthcare's really sad tales, this one isn't new — and it's certainly not the most egregious payer offense — but it is among the most blatant. Simply put, it's a form of healthcare insurance that really isn't. Earlier this year, Consumer Reports revisited the issue of an entire range of products with names like Mini-Meds, Discount Health Cards and Fixed Benefit Indemnity plans. In theory, the idea has always been to provide some healthcare coverage, however limited, to those who couldn't afford either a high-deductible health plan — or catastrophic only coverage. In reality, the practice includes some of the biggest names in the Health Insurance business — including Cigna, Aetna and Allstate. There is also an entire roster of late night TV ads pushing products like "A Real Healthcare Plan Starting As Little As 25 Cents a Day" from a company called HealthcareOne. It was estimated that HealthcareOne was taking in about $500,000 to $600,000 per month — before regulators finally shut it down.

Sample — Fixed Benefit Indemnity Plan
In most cases, especially the discount health cards, the benefits were either a small fraction of anything that could be considered useful — or simply non-existent. One lady signed up in order to get a "free flu shot." Eighteen months later — after $1,717 in payments, the only activity on her account was a single denied claim — for the flu shot. In fact, fixed benefit indemnity plans aren't even considered an insurance product — so they are not subject to the healthcare reform legislation. Most of these products are being peddled to temp or service sector workers — and it's often highlighted as an employee "benefit" by large retailers and food service employers at some of the nations largest chains &mdash including McDonalds. The current estimate is that about 3.9 million people are enrolled under these various plans. Consumer Reports went as far as to call the entire group of products "junk" and recommends avoiding them altogether. Their first suggestion on how to avoid them? "Don't shop from a search engine."

From the Consumer Reports article — here is a list of the four companies with the largest number of enrolled members — and their response as to why they provide these plans:

Largest Mini-Med Sellers

• Cigna Starbridge 265,000 enrollees. "Policies are offered to ... workers who typically are not eligible for any other employer sponsored-group health coverage."
• Aetna SRC 209,423 enrollees. "It's still some coverage for people who may not have any other options."
• BCS Insurance 115,000 enrollees, including McDonald's hourly employees. "It's a matter of affordability. These are largely part-time and hourly workers."
• American Heritage Life Insurance Company (Allstate) 69,945 enrollees. "Employers ... wanted to provide a more affordable voluntary benefit option to their ... lower-wage employees."

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 — the "sweeping" healthcare reform legislation that was enacted in 2010 specifically banned these products outright, but of course at this trough the word "ban" is unacceptable so waivers were quickly requested and just as quickly granted (effective until 2014). As of last month, there were 1,231 waivers issued, and there are 50 companies alone that offer mini-med products.

Unfortunately, healthcare news doesn't always have to be breaking to warrant coverage. In this case — it certainly doesn't qualify as breaking — but it absolutely warrants the added coverage.

Once upon a time, alarms detected burglars, officers responded and police made arrests. Underwriters depended on "loss control with a badge."

In fact, underwriters created the security industry in the early 1900s when they wired a problem Boston bank that then alerted the nearby telegraph office of a burglary. Police arrested the burglars and prevented a large claim.

Underwriters built upon this success and pushed policy holders to install burglar alarms because they worked — police made arrests and lowered claims. The alarm/police response concept worked so well that underwriters soon mandated that all high-value policy holders such as banks and jewelry stores install UL certified intrusion alarms before issuing a policy. They also created alarm discounts in their policy contracts to encourage their other commercial and residential policy holders to install burglar alarms.

This historic police/alarm/insurance model boosted profits through the 1970s, but the partnership lost its value, deteriorated and died. Before we resurrect this partnership and reconsider the "alarm discount," we need to understand what happened.

Background
What caused "loss control with a badge" to fade?

From the underwriter's perspective, the unprecedented bull market of the 1980s meant that profitability shifted away from loss control to a focus on collecting premium and driving investment-income. At the same time from the alarm perspective, the digital phone dialer appeared and opened a new mass market for inexpensive burglar alarms. The installed base of traditional alarm systems exploded into the tens of millions, creating a tsunami of false alarms for law enforcement that eroded value. With a staggering false alarm rate of over 98%, police now considered traditional alarms a waste of resources and response decayed. Officers no longer made arrests as alarm companies focused on selling "deterrence" instead of apprehensions. From the police perspective, they simply no longer cared.

The situation degraded to the point that major cities like Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and Milwaukee stopped responding to traditional burglar alarms altogether. This trend towards declining alarm response continues to be an issue. The police/alarm/insurance partnership had atrophied and neither the police nor underwriters saw value in traditional burglar alarms.

The Problem
Before we consider the solution, let's look at how traditional alarms are viewed by police. When hit with budget cuts, Detroit Police joined the growing trend and decided to end response to traditional alarms because there simply weren't enough officers to go around anymore. Traditional alarms no longer delivered.

On August 16, 2011 in a Detroit Free Press feature article, Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee Jr. declared that any triggered alarm will require a verified response before dispatch sends a cruiser to the location. Godbee cited a US Department of Justice report supporting verified response as a reliable practice towards eliminating waste and improving public service. Abandoning traditional alarms, Chief Godbee sees video verified alarms as the solution to more effective policing — using video to verify that the alarm is an actual crime. Detroit Police Commander Todd Bettison stated, "Our main goal is to respond to crime, and if we can utilize modern technology, then so much the better. We feel very passionate about this. We've been looking at this for a long time and from what we've observed this is definitely the way to go."

One program developed by the security industry to address this "false alarm problem" was to transform false alarms into a municipal revenue stream — creating city ordinances mandating false alarm fines and permits for burglar alarms.

While filling the city's coffers with false alarm fines may placate city councils, this approach does very little to increase arrests and address the need for effective loss control. In any case, in many jurisdictions this program is simply overwhelmed by draconian budget cuts that are decimating the ranks of law enforcement.

The recent Department of Justice publication, "The Impact of the Economic Downturn on American Police Agencies" stated that at least 10,000 officers had been laid off in 2011. In the last two years, the San Jose Police Department has reduced its officers by 20% — forcing them to reconsider alarm response.

In a memorandum sent to the City Council's public safety committee in December 2011, police Chief Chris Moore wrote that, "the primary purpose of police is to respond to reported crimes, preventive patrols and community policing, and the practice of responding to all audible alarms does not accomplish any of those goals." Chief Moore further underscored just how ineffective traditional alarms were at delivering apprehensions: "In 2011 San Jose had 12,450 alarm calls and of those there were only 2 arrests."

These statistics are not unique. According to the Las Cruces Sun-Times, Las Cruces, New Mexico is moving towards verified response after reviewing that in 2011 a total of 12,970 alarm runs resulted in only 2 burglars being arrested. In light of such statistics, San Jose, California went forward and implemented a verified response policy on January 1, 2011. City leaders say the new policy will allow police to focus on high priority calls and perhaps even reduce those response times.

This is the real benefit of verified response to underwriters — policy holders who use video verified alarms actually get faster response for more arrests. Police attention is focused on crimes-in-progress instead of on false alarms.

Most underwriters are not aware that police don't respond to traditional alarms in many areas of the country. Politicians avoid public outcry, and degraded alarm response policies are often presented in "politically friendly" code but the result is the same — no police response and higher claims.

"Broadcast and file" is one example of a "friendly" sounding non-response policy that is popular in Colorado and the West. For many large Colorado cities like Denver, a "broadcast and file" policy means that alarms are simply broadcast over the radio and an officer responds if he feels like it, and has nothing else to do. It is "voluntary response."

The majority of the time this means no response at all. In contrast, video verified alarms still receive mandatory dispatch in "broadcast and file" jurisdictions and deliver real value and arrests. Many police departments have simply relegated traditional alarm response to such a low priority that the response time is measured in hours not minutes.

Underwriters have not been totally ignorant of this trend towards degraded response. Large companies like State Farm and Allstate have already eliminated the "alarm deduction" in Florida and underwriters are moving to remove it from their contracts nationwide because they can no longer afford what has become a "marketing device" that has no impact on reducing claims.

The Solution
The alarm industry and law enforcement have a solution — new technology and updated policies. Video verified burglar alarms have resurrected the police/alarm response model. Police are making arrests again and changing the paradigm. The June 2012 cover story of SDM Magazine, "Does All of This Stop Crime?", cited examples of amazing arrest rates using video alarms. Universal monitoring, an alarm company in Charlotte, achieved over 60% arrest rates on their monitored video alarms in a one year period. F.E. Moran, an alarm company in Illinois, delivered 129 arrests for 136 incidents using video alarms protecting commercial property — over a 95% arrest rate!

The March 2012 issue of IACP (International Association of Police Chiefs) Police Chief Magazine documents a case study of this new approach at Detroit Public Schools in an article entitled, "Arresting Results: How One District Achieved a 70 Percent Closure Rate with Video Alarms." Detroit Public Schools installed video intrusion alarms in 30 vacant schools that were targets of vandalism and copper theft. During the 2010/2011 school year, there were 101 burglaries in these facilities. According to the report, the police closed 70 incidents with arrests of 123 people — a 70% arrest rate.

From an underwriter's point of view the results change the game — a few thousand dollars for video alarms saved millions in damage for Detroit Public Schools. In fact, Detroit officer John Greene made over 150 arrests using video intrusion alarms and was named officer of the year in Police K-9 Magazine.

These results are not unique — video intrusion alarms are delivering arrests across the country, saving insurers millions.

In February 2012, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, speaking of their new Priority Response program, announced initial arrest rates of 19% for video intrusion alarms. In contrast, the 2011 burglary arrest rates (without alarms) in Dallas and Minneapolis were 5.2% and 7.3% respectively. Even more worrisome, a study by the San Bernardino Police and Sheriff in 2007 reported an arrest rate of 0.08% for traditional alarms. For San Jose it was less than 2 arrests for every 10,000 alarm runs in 2011.

It is ironic that insurance companies continue to offer costly "alarm discounts" in cities that no longer respond to alarms that no longer deliver arrests.

An underwriter knows that putting one burglar in jail prevents an additional 30-50 burglaries they would have committed on the street (as well as eliminating the cost of the entire claims process incurred by the company). A single site in Chandler, Arizona protected with video intrusion alarms resulted in over 40 arrests in 4 months according to an article in Modern Contractor Magazine.

While response to traditional alarms is decaying, video verified alarms are transforming security and providing new value to law enforcement and underwriters. Alarm monitoring companies are even sending video clips of the intruders to police cell phones, making them even more effective. This is making a dramatic difference in combatting property crime, a paradigm shift for police and sheriffs. Video alarm technology and Priority Response has created an inflection point in an insurance market demanding the return to modern loss control.

It is also a new world for law enforcement. Both police and sheriffs embrace solutions that deliver arrests and make them more effective. Law enforcement sees video intrusion alarms as a fundamental paradigm shift and they want to encourage them, so much so that they are directing the 911 dispatch centers to create special dispatch codes that designate video alarms for high-priority response. In essence, the 911 operators treat video verified alarms as a crime-in-progress, not just an alarm.

Priority Response to video alarms means that the historical police/alarm concept has value for underwriters and works again protecting property and reducing losses. Police respond to video alarms and make arrests that reduce claims. Law enforcement is being proactive, encouraging their citizens to help them protect their property. Chief Steve Dye, of Grand Prairie, Texas recently announced a Priority Response policy on a televised newscast and sent flyers in the water bills of Grand Prairie property owners encouraging them to upgrade to video alarms. Sheriff Larry Amerson of Calhoun County wrote a letter to his constituents, "We believe that video alarms offer enhanced protection to you and help us in our efforts to keep Calhoun County citizens safe and protect their property."

Law enforcement is making arrests again, and it matters. The National Sheriffs Association even officially endorsed the video alarm manufacturer, Videofied, the first endorsement of a burglary alarm by national law enforcement — because they deliver more arrests.

It is a new world for underwriters. Loss control matters again. It's a world that is ripe for the rebirth of the police/alarm/insurance partnership. Underwriters need loss control — the stock market crash and economic downturn have radically impacted the insurance business model and profitability. Pat Speer, editor of Insurance Networking News, spoke of alarm systems in her January 2012 column, "Is Loss Control a Lost Art?" She concludes her article with, "Given the cost dynamics of the industry's long history of successful loss control initiatives, holding clients contractually accountable for known risk management prevention efforts is just logical. Isn't it?"

Underwriters are again forced to price policies that depend upon loss control for profitability. To strengthen the point, the downturn has created new crime categories, such as copper theft, that leave insurers with expensive property claims 20 to 30 times greater than the scrap value of the stolen copper — recovery is impossible when stealing $1,800 of copper creates a loss of $85,000 for broken plumbing, wiring and HVAC. CBS News recently reported on copper theft at a dental office in Sacramento where thieves caused over $10,000 in damage for $200 of copper.All this pressure on profitability comes at a time when the premium base is actually shrinking. With the proverbial financial gun to their heads, underwriters are looking to resurrect "loss control with a badge."

Reconsidering The Alarm Discount
Underwriters are becoming educated. Experience has taught them that video surveillance is not loss control. Most surveillance is NOT monitored in real time. It is true that high definition CCTV surveillance cameras and a video recorder can document a theft in high resolution for later review by the business owner. This may be interesting for a television audience, but for the underwriter the crime has already happened, the building is damaged and the crook is long gone with the loot.

Movie-quality video without real time monitoring and immediate police response is a solution, but for other problems. Video quality is not the key issue — once the monitoring operator can tell that there is an actual crime and sends the police — that is enough. There are hundreds of video clips of arrests on YouTube taken outdoors and in difficult low-light conditions that prove the point.

"Adequate video quality" means affordability and the good news is that video intrusion alarms themselves are now the price of a traditional system and much less expensive than a high definition surveillance system. Police don't need Hollywood quality to make arrests — what they need is instant notification of a crime-in-progress.

Underwriters know they must answer the question, "How can we encourage policy holders to use video alarms and police response to reduce losses?"

One simple approach is to review the existing alarm discounts and limit them to video intrusion alarms that deliver Priority Response. Practically speaking this means working with an alarm company as a partner that provides video verification services. Effective loss control means that video clips of the burglary are sent to a monitoring station where they are immediately reviewed and dispatched as crime-in-progress.

A longer term approach being coordinated by the PPVAR (Partnership for Priority Video Alarm Response) is to bring the insurers, law enforcement and security companies together to begin to develop guidelines and standards that could be used by underwriters for specific markets and applications. The board of the PPVAR is composed of representatives from the Police, Sheriffs, the National Insurance Crime Bureau, and the Alarm Industry. This security/insurer/law enforcement working group will analyze loss data for specific applications, such as construction, and create guidelines for minimum requirements needed to actually bring the police and stop the losses — an updated reincarnation of certificated alarm systems.

In any case, the alarm industry and the PPVAR are reaching out to insurance industry associations including the CPCU (Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters), the NICB (National Insurance Crime Bureau), ISO (insurance Services Corporation), PIAA (Professional Insurance Agents Association), and others to educate them and solicit their support as we attempt to resurrect the partnership that worked so well in the past — security companies installed alarms, police made arrests, and insurers reduced loss.

Additional Resources
For more information on the PPVAR: www.priorityresponse.info
CPCU webcast training is available at www.cpcusociety.org/page/184331/
NICB 6 minute video overview: www.ijmag.com/LossControl

aka Medicare Tries Some New Carrots and Sticks!

Effective October 1, 2012 Medicare is rolling out its new incentive program for hospitals where 1% of hospital payments are withheld by Medicare in a "pay for performance" or P4P program, with incentives paid out based upon performance against 20 quality metrics. Seventy percent of a hospital's score will be based on 12 specific measures based upon performance to guidelines and protocols. The remaining 30 percent of a hospital's value-based purchasing payment will be based on how it scored on random surveys of patients following discharge. These questions include ones asking how well their doctors and nurses communicated, whether rooms were clean and quiet and whether pain was dealt with promptly. Overall this is expected to redistribute nearly $1 billion among hospitals serving Medicare patients. These payments are funded by the 1% hospital withhold.

In addition, Medicare is also assessing a penalty to more than 2,200 hospitals with higher than average readmission rates. Hospitals with the highest rates for heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia patients will lose 1 percent of their regular reimbursements. This is expected to result in almost $300 million of savings. The penalty grows to 3% by October 2015.

This activity is a new step for Medicare. Before now its pay for performance programs were limited to those voluntarily participating in various programs. The new programs are mandatory for most acute care hospitals.

So what does this mean for the consumer? Is this a good things or a bad thing? Many are fearful that the government is starting to seriously meddle with their opportunity to get good health care. Some fear that hospitals are going to be pushing people out of the hospital too soon. Some are afraid that hospitals are going to be motivated more by the money than by what is right.

As a health care consultant who has practiced in this area for most of my 41+ year career, I am pleased to say I am more encouraged about this initiative than discouraged. This effort is a net positive to our quality of care. Here are some of my comments and reactions:

• Quality of care can readily be measured and compared to evidence-based clinical guidelines: The P4P program implemented by the government includes both specific clinical measures and direct patient surveys. It's not just based upon the numbers, but includes both measurable performance criteria and actual patient experiences. Today our firm's studies show that a significant portion of inpatient care historically reimbursed by Medicare is potentially avoidable. Longer than needed hospital stays generally reduce the quality of care and create a significant opportunity to acquire hospital based infections (e.g., MRSA) or perhaps even incur an injury or accident while hospitalized. The bottom line — hospitals should not be a desired place to be unless you are getting needed care only available in a hospital. One physician once stated, "hospitalization is a bad outcome of ambulatory care".
• Behavior follows reimbursement: As hospitals are motivated to perform better they will find a way to accomplish that. As with most businesses, when held accountable they will perform. In the past, performance wasn't a high priority and our results demonstrate that quite nicely. Hospitals for the most part have been paid on a fee-for-service basis, getting more for doing more.
• Incentives have to be meaningful: I am concerned that the 1% withhold will not have an adequate impact on the performance change. One percent falls into the "rounding" category. Until more meaningful the performance change will not be adequate. Our studies suggest that as much as 35% - 45% of today's Medicare hospital days are potentially avoidable. Until we see the chance for major improvement we are still only impacting the edges of our opportunity.
• Redo's are unacceptable: Readmission for particular conditions are evidence that the previous admission ended poorly. Sometimes patients are not appropriately treated or diagnosed and more work is required. Early discharge when care is not completed appropriately is a sign of bad quality. Early or prompt discharge when care is completed is a sign of good quality. Lengths of stay are generally too long or excessive on the average, not on every patient. However, you have to identify which patients can be discharged on a timely basis. Statistics show that as much as half of Medicare patients fall into a category known as the "uncomplicated" patient, a patient that can match ideal performance and medical criteria. The other half of the patients require additional care because of delayed recovery and other complications. The high quality institution will monitor and measure this and keep those needing longer stays and discharge those which no longer need care without delay. This incentive program is a good thing and those hospitals not appropriately discharging their patients need to be held accountable. Kudos to Medicare for this bold step.
• "Early" might not be "too early": Many times individuals complain that someone was discharged too early. In reality the standard many patients and family members use to determine this is flawed. It might be earlier than what someone else experienced, but it doesn't necessarily mean it is too early. Timely is important. Health care resources are scarce and we should only use them when appropriate. An extra day here and an extra day there adds up to significant waste. The average net charge per day in my region is close to $4,500. Is it really worth $4,500 to stay in a setting that is really not much better than a not-so-fancy hotel? Evidence based clinical criteria helps everyone understand when a patient is appropriately progressing towards discharge. When built on the most efficient path, with monitoring for indications that complications are necessary which might require additional days, patients are more appropriately discharged. As a result, costs go down, patients experience higher quality, and re-admits are reduced.

Summary
Medicare has introduced some useful and very helpful tools to improve our health care system. The private sector is already using many of these tools and will model more after these programs. Hopefully this will provide an improved foundation to make even more improvements to our health care system.

Winning Them Over
In Part 3 of this series, safety officer Ken Malcolm talked about the importance of building trust between hardnosers and those who try to change them. To this, Malcolm adds respect.

"Give them [hardnosers] respect," he says, "and problems go away. They might not like you, but when you handle people accordingly, someone is always watching, and that tough but fair method gets you respect."

Trust and respect form the pivot point that directs difficult employees away from dysfunction, toward responsibility. Hardnosed workers will never trust or respect you more than when you demonstrate to them that you have their best interest at heart.

You do this when you create intentionally interpersonal safety training to meet the intensely interpersonal weaknesses of workers.

Intentionally Interpersonal Safety Training
Not all worker resistance is of the severe magnitude experienced by the desperate general manager described in Part 1. But to any manager who suddenly realizes that "good employees" in his organization are on the verge of spinning into the Cycle of Rejection (see Part 2), the situation can seem as serious.

Such was the panicky attitude of a global manufacturing company's operations excellence director when he realized that his plants' safety representatives, were, for no apparent reason, beginning to resist his carefully crafted 5-year safety excellence plan. Midway through the plan, he found that the ability of his safety representatives to engage employees — younger employees in particular — was less than he initially believed.

The harder he pushed them to engage employees, the more they resisted. Sound familiar? The interpersonal skills of his representatives required improving in a manner that did not risk further alienating them, so he called the author for help.

Since hazard recognition was the next focus of the 5-year plan, it was decided to integrate relational skill development into the safety representative's hazard recognition training program. An emphasis on reaching younger workers was included. One of the company's values, integrity, served as the drumbeat.

The human development goal was to help the representatives understand the difference between the preferred behavioral tendencies of older workers, such as themselves, and the preference of the plants' predominately younger workers. An easy four-part behavior profile was incorporated to help the participants understand the difference. From earlier articles in this series, you may recognize this goal as helping the hardnoser understand why people do what they do.

The safety management goal was to teach the representatives a simple 1-2-3 hazard recognition process that could be persuasively communicated to employees.

The resulting outline for the 8-hour training course delivered by this author is as follows.

Learning Objectives

1. A review of the company value of integrity in relation to hazard recognition
2. A simple effective 3-step method of hazard recognition
3. A knowledge of the participant's own core behavior tendencies
4. A method to accurately recognize (read) the behavior tendencies of others
5. An understanding of how to 'sell' hazard recognition to others via persuasive communication skills targeted to the behavior tendencies of others
6. A strategy for maximizing hazard recognition through the networking behavior of Gen X and Y

The effectiveness of the intentionally interpersonal approach to safety training was immediately evident in the participants' feedback. Hardnosed safety representatives are not easily fooled. Most have seen a dozen lackluster varieties of the "safety flavor" of the month.

"He left no stone unturned," said one. Grasping the dual nature of the training, another said, "Not only did I learn about safety recognition but I also learned more about my own personality and the personality of coworkers." [The course emphasized behavior, but the common use of "personality" is close enough.]

Still another of the 75 participants said, "It wasn't what I expected." No, it isn't, which is the point. It met felt needs, unlike other safety training. Added the participant, "I liked the straight talk."

Most telling is the participant who stated that she will "use these ideas at work and at home." It is a reminder that the greatest needs are life skills. Another participant said that he would use the course material to "make personal changes."

Intentional Results
Success is never guaranteed. But the intentionally interpersonal safety training advocated in this article has proved successful in every work environment from which the T-JTA data that defines a hardnosed worker was extracted.

In addition to improving the measures of traditional safety management — recordables, lost times, observations — several measures of human resource management effectiveness were improved, including personnel turnover rate, workers' compensation claim rate and various measures of employee engagement or attachment.

One large maritime company saved over $20 million during a 2-year period as the author and his colleagues worked with them to conduct a company-wide interpersonal safety training program.

An organization committed to breaking down the barrier presented by hardnosers may reap the unimaginable "better results" spoken about by John Bennett in Part 3. But to do so requires a shift in management perspective — from a reactive posture in which the hardnoser is viewed as an object to be conquered to a proactive policy of ministering to the hardnoser's needs.

Below is the story of one company that made this commitment. It's the company whose desperate general manager initially called the author in Part 1. Remember him? He is the one who thought that his supervisors were acting like troubled kids. And he was right. So was his inclination to react in the right way.

Enabling A Safe And Profitable Transition
One beneficiary of the blended safety training approach was Chotin Carriers, Inc., now a part of the Kirby Corporation. Kirby's impending buy-out of Chotin, a small company of 120 employees, only added to the human resource and safety management challenges faced by Chotin's general operations manager, Arnie Rothstein.

Chotin's overall personnel turnover rates for the years previous to the buy-out were respectively 47%, 40%, 44%, 35% and 41%. Rothstein conservatively estimated that each employee turnover cost Chotin a minimum of $4,300, or an average annual turnover cost of $349,760.

Starting in Chotin's buy-out year, the author administered a series of training programs that addressed both the safety need of Chotin and its human resource development challenges. The result was that Chotin's turnover rates dropped to 20.3% and 2% respectively over a two-year period, saving Chotin thousands of dollars in personnel turnover costs.

During the same period of time, Chotin's safety performance was also improved. The company's total injury index rate (per 200,000 man-hours) dropped from 8.0 to 4.32, a 46% reduction. With an estimated cost of over $30,000 per lost time back injury, special emphasis was placed on reducing lost time injuries. The result was a 64% reduction in Chotin's lost time injury frequency rate.

Better than these results to Rothstein was the sweet aroma of employee cooperation, evidenced by one of the company's reformed hardnosers, who said, "I've learned more from this training than I've learned in all the other training put together."

Why Bother?
It is convenient to be like the skeptical Cleveland-area businessman in Part 3 who views everything in this presentation as silly "social work." But the evidence presented here suggests that you can not pretend that a sub-culture of hardnosed workers does not exist.

Take it from an expert in destructive behaviors. If there is one thing that delights a hardnoser — that encourages his resistance — it is knowing that management will ignore him, allowing him to run amok. Such tolerance provides him with a complete sense of control. It justifies his retreat into emotional isolationism, disengagement, and dysfunction.

Ignorance by management is not bliss. There is a price to pay for such folly.

Massive amounts of money are spent on strategies that, at best, merely limit the ongoing damage done by change-resistant employees.

No amount of pre-employment screening can solve the problem. No human resource policy, employee management strategy, or performance evaluation criteria can deter it.

Nothing short of a purposeful, committed effort to provide hardnosers a path to healthy personal development will decrease their resistant nature. Safety is the open door to that end.

Bibliography

"Focus On Teamwork, Attitude Improves Quality And Safety." The Waterways Journal. April 25, 1994: 41-44

Newton, Ron. No Jerks On The Job. Irving, TX. PenlandScott Publishers, 2010.

Riddle, Glenden P. An Evaluation Of The Effectiveness Of Stress Camping Through The Use Of The Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis Exam. Research Project. Dallas Theological Seminary, December 1978.

Taylor, Robert. Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis Manual. Thousand Oaks: Psychological Publications, Inc., 1992.

Turning The Corner
Admittedly, Part 1 and Part 2 of this series may be a bit discouraging to the solution-seeking reader. But as a wise professor states, "There is no implementation without, first, evaluation."

So what has our evaluation revealed?

First, the dysfunctional nature of the average hardnosed worker employed in traditionally change-resistant work sectors is representative of his greater employment family, both labor and management. It is not the portrait of an isolated employee or two. The nature is systemic, as are its crippling effects.

Second, the extent of potential behavioral dysfunction in hardnosers is staggering. The research data points past the occasional whimsical, inane antics of the passive-aggressive worker who simply annoys others. It directs us to the darkly devious behavior of someone, or a bevy of someones, who is self-destructive, emotionally unengaged, and constantly looking to jump off the ship after lighting the fuse that may blow it up.

Third, management has largely failed in its attempts to wrestle control of the workforce away from hardnosers. Traditional quick-action employee management strategies lack the foundational understanding of both the cause of defiant behavior and the dysfunctional team dynamics that it creates.

Last, management has often chosen the wrong method to seize control of hardnosers. The preferred tactic has been to tighten control through the repeated issuance of compliance standards. Such "what to do" and "how to do it" standards stiffen the hardnosed worker's resolve to reject management's ploys.

Engineering consultant Kevin Sorbello fittingly compares the change-resistant workforce to a dysfunctional family in which "those making the rules unconsciously see themselves as adults in charge of children." Conversely, he notes that workers of lower rank see themselves as being "treated like children by unfit elitists. The fact that this scenario is so ubiquitous," he says, "is disheartening."

In light of this stark portrayal, what can be done to heal a defiant and dysfunctional employment family?

Capitalize On Dysfunction
One word points us down the right path. It keeps cropping up [five times above]. The word is dysfunctional. There's a reason it is our key word.

Dysfunction brings with it opportunity. The same weaknesses that define dysfunctional workers are the ones that open the door for us to help them personally and to improve the cooperative nature of the entire workforce.

But this can't happen until we acknowledge several hard-to-believe truths about the nature of hardnosed workers. These are beliefs gleaned by the author after four decades of listening to, observing, profiling, and helping dysfunctional people.

1. Hardnosers really want to improve.
They are really not into self-flagellation, though they expect it to happen (defeatism) — they'd rather have the opposite: success.

2. Hardnosers are stuck and need a push.
They really don't know how to solve their own problems, nor why they are stuck in a defeatist rut.

3. Hardnosers want simple honesty.
They will not trust you until you first demonstrate to them your complete honesty.

4. Hardnosers desire compassion, not charity.
They innately sense the difference — one is considered condescending and offensive to them; the other is acceptable.

5. Hardnosers respond best to old-fashioned "tough love."
They desire hard boundaries, particularly those that help them achieve hard-to-reach goals.

6. Hardnosers want you to earnestly listen to them.
They want to tell you vital information about themselves — their real and felt needs — that enables you to help them mature.

It is difficult for some skeptics to embrace these beliefs. It is easier to adopt the attitude of one Cleveland-area business owner who believes that "most employees with bad attitudes come that way and it is not up to you to be a social worker." To him, any alternative to improving the quality of workers other than perfecting the hiring and firing process is "silly," even if personnel turnover costs are astronomical.

Safety officer Ken Malcolm at Safety & More P/L begs to differ. He says, "Hardnosed negatives can become hardnosed positives." The key, he says, is trust.

Malcolm states that trust does not exist because "the past experiences [of workers] have not been good." He suggests that workers have rarely been exposed to managers "who put value on worker input." Perhaps they once worked for a grumpy guy in Cleveland. More likely, they've been jaded by repeated exposure to the Cycle of Rejection described in Part 2 of this series.

Agree with it or not, the path to profitability involves helping hardnosers cure their dysfunctional behavior, a task that starts with listening to what they say about themselves and about control-minded authorities.

Listening For Needs
Within the well-worn contentious discourse proffered by hardnosers is an easily recognizable admission of their foibles.

• I have trouble accepting authority of any kind.
• I am emotionally cold and uncaring.
• I often say the wrong thing in the wrong way.
• I don't trust anyone enough to give them my loyalty (everyone is out to get me).
• I am not a good team player.

You can also hear their pleas for help.

• Help us accept authority, not persistently fight back.
• Help us live emotionally healthy lives, not crawl into an emotional shell.
• Help us develop better interpersonal skills, not alienate others.
• Help us bond with each other and the company, not be disloyal.
• Help us be better team players, not self-interested individuals.

These needs should sound familiar — they directly correspond to the "snapshot" of a hardnosed worker described in Part 1 of this series.

A hardnosed worker is a self-destructive, emotionally self-centered, uncontrollable person who would rather cut-and-run than commit.

From this snapshot, the human needs that it reveals, and the failure of traditional means to change hardnosed behavior, you know that there is only one action plan — one line of attack — that will result in positively changing a resistant workforce into a cooperative one. But, like the hardnosed Cleveland businessman, you might have trouble admitting it.

You have to help them develop the relational skills that they lack.

But don't let this series tell you the obvious, though it bears repeating. Let the desperate general manager from Part 1 of this series say it. He's the one who in 1992 initially linked the characteristics of a juvenile delinquent to the antics of his hardnosed employees. The assistance he sought from a troubled youth expert is as difficult as it is simple.

"I simply want you to help my people treat each other as people," he asked.

He knew the problem pointed to a lack of interpersonal skills. So do you. And so do the perpetrators, who secretly want your help.

But how do you provide assistance without risking further rejection?

Using Safety To Change People
Job safety is the only joint partnership with management to which the hardnoser has ceded a modicum of control and cooperation. It is the only "face saving" venue in which he consents to [non-craft skill] personal development. To him, change for safety's sake is grudgingly agreeable.

With safety training comes the opportunity to change the hardnoser, if the correct approach is utilized. Felt needs should be front-and-center — the odor of command, control, and compliance should be reduced.

John Bennett, VP of M.C. Dean, urges us to remember that "it is not about the system, regulations, nor policy or procedure. It is all about the people."

Ill-conceived training strategies in which personal development is added-on to standard compliance training rarely work. Hardnosers are stubborn, not stupid. They can sense a convenient manipulative end run by management. Ever hear them call leadership training "charm school?"

To achieve human change requires a more carefully crafted safety training strategy than most organizations currently employ. Such a strategy demands a more need-sensitive safety management system.

What is recommended here extends beyond simple supplements to standardized compliance training programs. What is needed is a radical redesign of safety thinking in dealing with a sub-culture of resistance.

Above all, one hard-learned lesson about securing cooperation from defiant people must be remembered. You must meet their felt needs before they will fully give you what you want — compliance and control. If safety doesn't do this, you remain stuck in the sink hole of opposition, forever containing resistance rather than correcting it.

Life Skills Are Felt Needs
A felt need is simply anything people consciously lack and desire. As noted, the hardnoser consciously but quietly desires self-improvement, particularly in life skills.

One example is the need of supervisors to learn practical leadership skills. As new supervisors quickly rise from the lower ranks of organizations, many supervisors suffer from the lack of leadership development inherent in on-the-job training.

Joe Johnson says that new supervisors are likely to be "given a 'white hat,' put in charge, and sent out in the organization with instructions to make things happen safely." But of the leadership creation process, Johnson asks, "What 'tools' have these individuals been provided to insure he or she will be a good safety manager?"

In addition to leadership skills, other life skill needs that are likely felt by hardnosers of all ranks include:

• Interpersonal communication skills (all aspects)
  • Accurate listening skills
  • Accurate shaping of the message to the listener
  • Accurate delivery of the message for acceptance
  • Accurate use of reflective listening, clarification
• Relationship building
• Behavioral awareness and pattern recognition
• Anger management/tolerance/empathy
• Team building
• Critical thinking and decision-making
• Coaching and mentoring

Under the confines of employee development and safety training, we have regrettably postponed meeting these needs until it is too late, after the worker feels under-appreciated. Properly, these are the needs you should start meeting at the beginning of new hire orientation.

What Do I Do?
The practical answer to the initial question — What should I do to change hardnosed workers? — is as basic as it sounds complex.

To change a hardnosed work force, you should implement a hybrid training program that simultaneously combines traditional safety-related training subjects with topics that develop the character of the hardnoser in their expressed area of needs.

The key is seamless simultaneous integration. Safety and human development should be taught at the same time, not as separate courses.

To avoid the Cycle of Rejection discussed in Part 2, the hardnoser must not feel that personal manipulation is the purpose of the training, nor should it be. Yet he should also walk away with a sense of obligation to practice (note: different than "comply with") what is taught.

To make a life-changing combination of safety and personal development training workable requires two organizational commitments.

1. The organization must improve its quality of training.
A higher level of training is required, as is a better quality instructor skilled in safety, communications and human development. Revised curricula must be employed. Cattle-call training must be replaced with a caring personal attitude.

2. The organization must meld its safety and operation cultures.
A unified work culture is required, one which leaves hardnosers no wiggle room for discarding their training lessons under the excuse of "safety behavior" versus "operational behavior." Operations cannot be allowed to deprive the hardnoser of training's human development gains.

John Bennett underscores the mistake of trying to create a safety culture within an existing company culture in order to change people. He states that the tactic "is incongruent with the overall mission of the company." Bennett suggests that "building upon the existing culture and simply inserting the safety aspect" is a more sensible way to build a unified work force. "Involving people in a sincere way," he says, "will produce better results than were heretofore imaginable." The hardnoser agrees wholeheartedly.

The Essentials
For the best results, a hybrid safety training program should immediately focus on the greatest needs of the hardnoser: interpersonal communication skills, emotional openness and honesty, and relational teamwork. All these needs share a common denominator. They point to the hardnoser's fundamental lack of behavioral understanding.

Rarely are hardnosers properly educated about behavior — they do not bring such knowledge with them to the job. Most struggle with discerning why people do what they do — many ascribe the wrong motive to other's behavior. It's easy for hardnosers to fall into the Cycle of Rejection.

As explained in Part 2, answering the why question is vital to securing the hardnoser's cooperation. If you desire to tear down the walls of resistance in your work force, here's what you need to know.

• If you help the hardnoser understand his unique behavior temperament and its affects on him — why he is prone to repeat certain behavior patterns — he will call you a friend.
• If you show him why others act as they do because of their unique behavior temperaments, he will call you a good friend.
• If you teach him how to build productive relationships with others despite their differences in temperament, he will call you his best buddy.
• If you do none of the above yet try to change him, he will think you are simply attempting to control him. We've seen where that leads.

It is essential to integrate a simple behavior paradigm into every aspect of safety training. Uncomplicated behavior assessment profiles like the DISC or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® can serve this purpose. These are accurate, easily integrated "tools" that produce the type of behavioral understanding needed by hardnosers and non-hardnosers alike.

But this is no shill for the traditional haphazard use of behavior profile tools to soothe the ruffles of an agitated work force or as a guest speaker's play toy. This is a call to deeply interweave two narratives — safety management and human development — on a consistent basis to meet the targeted needs of employees.

This author will attest to the instant magic brought by behavioral self-discovery through platforms like the DISC or MBTI. One unforgettable incident occurred when the cigar-chomping director of one company's division first saw the results of his DISC self-analysis. The director's cigar dropped from his mouth as he stood up, staggered about the training room with his analysis, and shouted, "This is me! This is me! This is freakin' me." Presto.

But that momentary magic is useless unless it is converted into tangible results while sustained within a framework of a safety training program that is designed to simultaneously control and change lives.

To do this requires a bold commitment from executive managers that are tired of butting their heads against behavioral barriers. Let the general manager mentioned in Part 1 remind us again that the alternative, letting hardnosers drag the company down, is "not an option."

What this commitment looks like in practicality, and the results that it can accomplish, will be the subject of Part 4 of this series.

Bibliography

"Focus On Teamwork, Attitude Improves Quality And Safety." The Waterways Journal. April 25, 1994: 41-44

Newton, Ron. No Jerks On The Job. Irving, TX. PenlandScott Publishers, 2010.

Riddle, Glenden P. An Evaluation Of The Effectiveness Of Stress Camping Through The Use Of The Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis Exam. Research Project. Dallas Theological Seminary, December 1978.

Taylor, Robert. Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis Manual. Thousand Oaks: Psychological Publications, Inc., 1992.