What Happened?
The Louisville, Kentucky, public works department recently reported an OSHA recordable injuries rate of 15 percent, down from 31 percent in January 2012. To reduce the department’s number of serious injuries that prevent employees from working or limit their duties, Louisville officials implemented a stretching regimen and other safety protocol.
The Goal
To cut the public works department’s OSHA recordable injuries rate by more than 50 percent in two years, Louisville has all employees conduct a series of exercises at the start of each new shift. A team leader guides workers through kinesthetic routines to warm up their bodies and reduce the chance of injury.
Louisville officials also created an Accident Review Committee to investigate each injury that is filed. Based on what they learn, the committee can recommend preventative measures the department can take to prevent a repeat injury. These recommendations are passed down through management so all levels of the department are aware and accountable for safety protocol.
In addition, the public works department has created a modified duty policy which allows injured employees to resume work faster than before by taking on more administrative roles until they are healed.
All of these changes coincided with the city’s newly launched Office of Performance Improvement and the LouieStat program. The office focuses on metrics-driven performance improvement, and keeps track of relevant statistics from each department to gauge the impact of new initiatives to increase efficiency. LouieStat was designed to coordinate meetings between leadership of city departments and the mayor to review and analyze performance statistics.
The public works department measured OSHA recordable injuries and how much time was lost to each incident. The changes made to the department’s safety protocol were based on data-driven insight extracted from performance metrics. As a result, time lost to injury has dropped from 21 percent in January 2012 to 6 percent in January 2014.
New OSHA Rule
Last November, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) proposed a rule to improve the tracking of workplace injuries and illnesses to increase safety and efficiency. The rule calls for organizations with 20 or more employees that have high injury and illness rates to electronically submit their workplace injury and illness data annually through OSHA’s Data Initiative. This information will then be available to the public, allowing OSHA to pinpoint specific workplaces where workers are at a higher risk of injury or illness.
OSHA can then allocate more compliance assistance and enforcement resources to lower incidence rates. The public data will also allow organizations to compare their performance statistics with other cities or organizations. Similar to the LouieStat program, the Data Initiative hopes to utilize data pools to identify trends and adjust preventative measures for faster improvements. It also creates the opportunity for sharing of information and best practices.
In 2012, an estimated three million workers were injured on the job in the United States.
Data-Driven Solutions
Gov1 has kept an eye on the latest data-driven efforts cities are deploying to cut costs and improve efficiency, many of which work to increase transparency and interdepartmental collaboration.