Contractor tip

Masonry Construction, March, 2006 by Damian Lang

Safety is an Asset to Improve your Bottom Line

How much are you spending annually on OSHA fines, lost-time workdays, and Workers Compensation? Would implementing a company wide safety program & giving your employees an additional incentive check actually save you money? Take a look at what it has done for my business, Lang Masonry Contractors.

Lang Masonry's safety program was implemented in 1995 after the company's Worker's Compensation rate soared as the result of two workers falling off scaffolding. Both men were good friends, foremen, and still hold management positions with our company today. One of these men fell from a height of fifteen feet & broke both his heels. To recuperate, he laid six weeks in bed with his heels straight up in the air. The other one fell twenty-two feet off a chimney. In the early 1990s, these incidents almost put Lang Masonry Contractors out of business.

After these two accidents, I thought long and hard about our safety record. I wondered why the employees didn't follow our safety procedures. Then, my safety manager told me that I was the problem. He said, "You go to the jobsites and see men not using respirators, and even when they don't have the guardrails up, you act like you don't see it. He continued, "I know you are busy, but the men know you see the infractions, yet you let them go due to other pressing issues". It became obvious to me that he was right. My people believed that I wasn't serious about safety. I told the men that we had safety programs, but I didn't enforce them adequately. When we as leaders say one thing and do another, our workers believe that we really care about what we do - not what we say. The saying "Do as I say and not as I do" never worked with our employees.

By the mid 1990s, our worker's compensation rate had risen of payroll.

When your payroll is nearly $250,000 a month, that's $45,000 a month just for workers comp. Yikes! I had to do something, so I came up with a safety program backed with an incentive check for every field employee. As a result of our safety program, our rate is presently at .86%. That's less than 1%! We estimate that this lower rate is saving us approximately $300,000 per year. We haven't had a serious accident in ten years. We have only had A couple minor OSHA fines over the last ten years as well. Anymore, when OSHA comes on our jobsites they focus their attention on other contractors instead of LMC.

If you don't have a safety program in place, I encourage you to start one. The safety policies you implement, will meet some resistance. There will be some employees, often your very best ones, who will be reluctant to follow the new policies. Address and redirect those employees immediately. If they still refuse to follow the new policies, they must be let go, even if they are top production workers. Let me tell you, that's not an easy situation. But, once people realize that you care about safety, and the rules apply to everyone, the morale of your whole company will improve. We even provide a quarterly incentive to our employees for upholding safety standards. And, even with the cost of this incentive, our bottom line is much healthier. Safety has gone from a liability to an asset for Lang Masonry.

Next month 1 will be talking about how we actually set up our safety plans, measure the results and pay incentive based on them. Stay tuned!

Damian Lang is the author of the book "Rewarding and Challenging Employees for Profits in Masonry". To order a copy of his book or to attend one of his seminars held specifically for mason contractors, call Kerri Huck at Lang Masonry 800-417-9272.