Improving Safety: Reducing Incidents through...

This whitepaper presents a Four Factor S.A.F.E. Model of individual characteristics related to risk propensity. It follows that model’s performance

in four empirical studies. The results provide consistent and convincing evidence that individual differences in risk profile can significantly affect

safety outcomes including injury rates, workers’ compensation claims, and OSHA recordables.

Improving Safety: Reducing Incidents through Effective Employee Selection

[WHITEPAPER]

© 2015 Select International®, Inc. www.selectinternational.com

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Core to most theories of accident causation is the notion that human error comes into play at some point, either directly, such as when an individual violates safety policies and procedures, or indirectly, such as when a leader fails to establish and enforce a culture that values safety. The hierarchy of controls is a cornerstone of health and safety decision-making, and in many ways can be seen as a ranking of the effectiveness of various strategies for reducing the likelihood of human error as it relates to safety exposure and risk.

Traditionally, human resources’ efforts to reduce safety

incidents have been considered to fall in the lower levels of the hierarchy of controls, usually in the “administrative

controls” category. Efforts associated with effective

training of employees and standardized, safe work procedures reasonably fall within that level. Underlying this is an inherent assumption that all employees respond relatively equally to training or to following accepted procedures. One might refer to this as the “generic

worker” model. We can all agree that some salespeople

sell more than others, and that some athletes are faster, stronger and more agile than others. Why then would we assume that everyone will respond equally well to training and instruction or that they all come into the work environment with the same level of inherent risk propensity?

What if some people are just fundamentally more likely to be involved in incidents than others, for a myriad of reasons, regardless of the training they receive? What if you were accurately able to identify these high risk employees before you ever hired them? If so, then you could eliminate that risk or hazard entirely by screening them out during the hiring process. In that way, employee selection may prevent errors that haven’t happened yet

because higher risk individuals were removed before they ever set foot on the worksite. This focus on prevention is similar to the higher, more effective levels within the hierarchy of controls, such as substitution. In a sense, we are reducing the risks, as opposed to completely eliminating them, since no one is completely devoid of inherent risk factors. In essence, we would be replacing a high risk individual with a low risk one.

The concept of including safety as one of the criteria for selecting employees is very consistent with a relatively recent push within the safety management world to incorporate “Prevention through Design” into

organizational safety management programs. The idea is that the only stage in the life cycle of any process where the risks are theoretical is in the conceptual or design phase. Reducing risks at this stage is more efficient and cost effective than at any other stage. This is causing organizations to incorporate safety criteria into decision-making processes such as in deciding which contractors to bring on-site and which piece of equipment to purchase. Including safety criteria in employee selection is a logical offshoot of these programs. In fact, some organizations are already incorporating safety as a criterion for employee selection. With the selection tools currently being developed and offered on the market, this process will only become more commonplace. It would not be surprising to see organizations using selection processes as a benchmark for best in class safety management systems in the near future because the concept of employee selection using these tools is consistent with the state-of-the-art in safety management and with the top of the hierarchy of controls, such as substitution. Using safety as a criteria for selection of employees, through the use of scientifically valid and legally defensible selection tools, can be effective in reducing organizational risks and can be used as part of an overall safety management system to prevent injuries and illnesses and lower associated costs.

The current paper provides an overview of research aimed at improving safety performance by accurately measuring relevant individual competencies related to risk propensity at the individual contributor level, and using them to screen out high risk individuals in the hiring process.

Individual Characteristics Related to Safety Performance and

Safety Outcomes

In order to identify and select the individuals who are more likely to be safe workers, it is important to distinguish why some people are more likely to be involved in safety incidents than others. Research points to several key individual-level factors that are related to safety performance and outcomes. Safety performance can be defined as safety-related behaviors (e.g., following safety procedures, using safety equipment, encouraging others to follow rules), whereas safety outcomes are tangible events, such as safety incidents or injuries.

Improving Safety: Reducing Incidents through Effective Employee Selection

Authors: Matthew O’Connell, Ph.D., Esteban Tristan, Ph.D., Kristin Delgado, Ph.D. & Ron Gantt, MEng.

What if some people are just fundamentally more likely to be involved in incidents than others?

3 © 2015 Select International®, Inc.

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So what are the factors that define someone as being “high risk?”

Based on a review of research in this area, four primary risk factors emerged as stable predictors of both safety performance and safety outcomes.

Across occupations, acting responsibly is of utmost importance. Following the rules, remaining on-task, working hard and making well thought-out judgments all contribute to being a safe worker. A key factor that contributes to these behaviors is the trait of Conscientiousness. People who are highly conscientious are hard workers; they want to do the right thing and are more apt to follow rules and follow through. As such, they are much more likely to be safe employees. Individuals who are low in conscientiousness may disregard rules and, in some cases, actively rebel against authority. The key sub-factors of conscientiousness that are related to safety are: Follows Rules, Hardworking/Achievement Oriented, and Reliable. Research has shown that these behaviors are associated with higher traffic violations and unsafe work behaviors.

Locus of Control is another personality trait that can differentiate people who act responsibly from those who do not. Individuals who have an internal locus of control believe they have control over what happens to them. As such, they are much more likely than individuals with an external locus of control to take action to prevent negative events (e.g., accidents, equipment failure). In contrast, individuals with an external locus of control perceive that many things in life are out of their hands, including safety issues. Therefore, these individuals may not intervene or take action when needed. Across a variety of occupations, locus of control has been found to predict accident risk, number of reported accidents and accident severity. Moreover, according to some research, employees with external safety locus of control reported significantly more accidents, which led to significantly higher medical costs, than employees with internal safety locus of control.

A third factor, Impulsivity, which is also closely related with Thrill Seeking and Risk Taking, has long been associated with unsafe behaviors. Impulsive individuals tend to be more volatile, unpredictable and less adaptive to change. They have difficulty managing stress and are more likely to take unreasonable chances, ignore safety rules and make rash decisions that may place themselves and others in compromising and potentially dangerous situations. These individuals are more likely to engage in unsafe behaviors because they underestimate the likelihood of getting hurt or enjoy the thrill of taking risks.

The fourth factor, Awareness, focuses on the individual’s

Attention to Detail, their ability to multi-task, and their general awareness of their environment. Incidents often occur, not because of overt actions such as taking shortcuts, not wearing proper protective equipment or behaving in an unsafe manner, but because the individual was not sufficiently aware of the dangers around them.

The Four Factor S.A.F.E. Model provides a useful way of organizing these individual characteristics around the four primary factors, as seen in the figure below.

Figure 1. Four Factor S.A.F.E. Model

The combination of these four S.A.F.E. factors provides an accurate and consistent method of screening individuals into jobs that are higher in terms of exposure to accidents or physical injury. The following studies illustrate the effectiveness of using such an approach in the hiring process.

Study 1: Reducing Injuries in the Auto Industry

Injury data from a Canadian-based auto manufacturer over a one-year period was tracked for employees hired using a new selection process, which included the combination of the S.A.F.E. factors described above, and was compared to injury data from employees hired prior to use of this new selection process. During this one-year period, 497 individuals from a group of 3,932 employees hired prior to the new selection process reported an injury of one type or another. During that same time period, 10 out of a group of 294 individuals hired using the new process reported injuries. This represents a 73% reduction in injury rates between the two groups.



Figure 2. Comparative injury rates for production employees hired using two alternative hiring processes

A limitation of this study was that the injury data did not differentiate between acute vs. chronic injuries. Employees who have been employed longer are likely to exhibit more chronic, repetitive motion-type injuries than newer employees. However, the organization itself reported that injuries within the first year of employment, especially acute injuries, are more typical than injuries among more experienced employees. The limitation of the study notwithstanding, it is still clear that there was a significant reduction in reported injuries amongst those hired using the new screening process.

Study 2: Reducing Injury Rates at an Electrical Equipment

Manufacturer

A leading manufacturer of electric equipment implemented a comprehensive and rigorous hiring process for production employees at two of their flagship U.S. manufacturing facilities. The goal was to implement a selection system that would consistently identify and hire safe, productive employees who would be less likely to engage in at-risk behaviors and become injured on the job.

The multiple-step hiring process included a validated online assessment battery, similar to the one used in study 1, which incorporated the Four Factor S.A.F.E. Model. In addition, a customized production exercise that simulated some of the main physical components of the job was included as part of the hiring process. This new hiring process was used consistently at the two sites, such that all new production employees had to successfully pass through each of the stages in order to be employed by the company.

A longitudinal study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of the new hiring process at improving safety performance, as well as increasing productivity, quality and reducing turnover. To accomplish this, incident and injury rates prior to implementing the

new hiring process were compared to post implementation rates. Safety data were obtained for the two years immediately prior to using the new system, and two years immediately following the implementation of the new process. This was therefore, a classic pre-post experimental design. Using a two-year span for both the pre- and post- provided sufficient time to collect a stable estimate of injury and incident rates, and ensured that both time periods were of equal duration. To control for length of service, injury data was only analyzed for the first year of employment for each employee. For incident and injury data, two metrics were analyzed:

Safety Incidents: First aid injuries or near misses

Injuries: OSHA recordable injuries

Figure 3 and 4 present a comparison of pre- and post- first year of employment safety incident and OSHA recordable rates, respectively.



Employees hired with the previous hiring process had overall incident rates of 38% in their first year on the job (based on 302 total incidents during that time span). By comparison, the incident rate for employees selected through the new process was only 24% (based on 76 total incidents). This represents a 37% reduction in overall safety incidents during the first year of employment.

More importantly, even stronger results were found when OSHA recordable injury rates were compared. Prior to implementing the new hiring process, the incident rate was 17% (135 OSHA recordables), whereas this rate dropped to only 9% (28 OSHA recordables) for employees hired through the new process. This represents nearly a 50% reduction in recordable injuries during the first year of employment over that time period.

Study 3: Identifying Accident Risks Early on the Hiring Process

In this study, 730 candidates applying for hourly production jobs at a large U.S. manufacturing firm were asked to report how many work-related safety incidents they had been involved in within the past five years. This information was not used as part of the hiring process. The candidates completed an online assessment battery consisting of the four factor safety model described earlier. A weighted composite, primarily composed of the Four Factor S.A.F.E. Model components resulted in four possible categories, ranging from Poor Fit (i.e., high risk for engaging in unsafe behaviors/less likely to be productive employees) to Very Good Fit (i.e., very low risk for engaging in unsafe behaviors /very likely to be productive employees).

Figure 5. Percentage of candidates involved in work-related safety incidents within the past five years.

As can be seen in Figure 5, 22% of candidates who were Not Recommended reported that they had been involved in at least one safety incident in the past five years. On the other hand, only 7% of candidates in the Strongly Recommended category responded so.

There are limitations with this methodology. First, it relies on self-reports of past behaviors regarding previous accidents. However, several studies have shown that self-reported accidents and supervisor ratings of accidents correlate quite strongly ( r=.61 to r=.79). The presumption here is not that involvement in one work-related safety incident will necessarily result in another future incident. As discussed earlier, there is a myriad of factors that lead to an incident, many of which are out of the direct control of the individual. Nonetheless, it’s important to note that

a study of over 500,000 commercial drivers found that involvement in a prior crash increased the likelihood of a future crash by 87%.

Secondly, this study did not control for differential rates of exposure to dangerous situations. This is simply difficult to control for in an applicant pool where candidates come from differing backgrounds, have different levels of experience, etc. Nonetheless, there is nothing that would lead us to think that there would be a significant relationship between previous levels of exposure to unsafe environments and the four primary safety factors, i.e., conscientiousness, locus of control, awareness and impulsivity that drove the recommendations on the predictor side.

Study 4. Reducing Work-Related Injuries at an Auto

Manufacturer

In this study, approximately 2,500 candidates who were applying to contract production positions at a large, global manufacturing company were administered the same safety assessment as described in study 3, based on the Four Factor S.A.F.E. Model. However, to gain a clearer estimate of the true impact of this assessment the results of the assessment were not used for hiring decisions nor were they communicated to anyone in the organization. This is often referred to as a pure predictive design. Worker’s compensation claims for 1,932 employees who were ultimately hired were tracked by the organization over the course of 12 months.

As mentioned earlier, the assessment provides an overall recommendation regarding the candidate’s appropriateness for

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the job. Figure 6 below presents worker’s compensation claims

for individuals in each of those four categories.

The results are dramatic. Candidates in the Poor Fit category, which only represented approximately 9% of this sample, are two times more likely to have a documented, work-related injury over the course of their first 12 months on the job than those in the Good Fit or Very Good Fit categories.

Figure 6. Worker’s Compensation Claims over First 12 months on

the job

As stated earlier, this was a pilot study and the results of the assessment were not used in making a hiring decision. However, if this organization were to simply screen out individuals in the Poor Fit category and replace them with the average individual from the remaining three categories, they would obtain the following results:

850 fewer lost days directly associated with job-related injuries

A direct savings of $269,000

An indirect savings of over $1 million (based on OSHA estimates cited earlier)

Clearly, there are many factors that contribute to workplace injuries. But, without question, accurately screening out high risk individuals in the first place should be part of any comprehensive safety program.

Summary of Findings

Taken together, the results of these four studies, in conjunction with a long list of other applied studies, demonstrate that screening candidates on characteristics associated with increased

risk for unsafe behavior is an effective and straightforward strategy for reducing risk in the workplace. Interestingly, the characteristics of those who are less likely to be involved in safety incidents are also the same factors that are associated with higher levels of productivity. So, focusing on these characteristics, as well as other important job related factors in the hiring process, not only reduces the likelihood of incidents and worker’s compensation claims, it is also likely to result in

higher productivity, quality and organizational citizenship behavior.

Bottom Line

Better selection processes in and of themselves are not enough to eliminate incidents and improve safety. However, interventions targeted at improving safety climate and safety performance can be greatly enhanced by selecting individuals who are less likely to be involved in incidents in the first place, are more likely to be receptive to training, and more likely to support safety initiatives. Systematically applying an accurate and fair pre-employment selection process to substitute higher risk individuals with lower risk ones should be considered core to any safety management systems.

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Filed Worker's Compensation Claim Due to Injury on Job

Using safety as a criteria for selection of employees, through the use of scientifically

valid and legally defensible selection tools, can be effective in reducing organizational risks

Improving Safety: Reducing Incidents through...

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