There are many ways in which you can try to influence change, what is your current AIR?? and what are your main offending accidents??

quote=marklinton] reducing accidents on a single site by 50% in 12 months.

Thanks in advance for any advice.
Mark

I would firstly ask the CEO if he was willing to fully resource the initiative. Then looking at the main causes, introduce proven control methods. From the type of accidents you mention, it shoul;d not be too difficult; i.e. contact with machinery - correct guarding / proximity cut offs etc. As for manual handling use mechanical aids to reduce / eliminate. From your description, I think the approach needs to be a hearts and minds change of attitude from the workforce and this is the real challenge for you. Perhaps you can look at changing the rules you operate under, making it a disciplinary offence to operate machinery without guarding etc

Thanks for the responses so far many things mentioned are things we are already thinking about - incident and near miss reporting plays a big part in our improvement, getting the CEO to run a working party to develop improvements and then for him to roll out the improvements, the involvement of employees in the development of new 'rules' for safety, the role of disciplinary action (we have been living to the principles of Prof Reasons 'just culture' to mixed results but I would be reluctant to move from this). I think the point of Teh_Boy makes regarding honesty is a key point - we have had opportunities to 'drop' accidents from the stats in the past but we never have taken them and have no intention to start now but there will always be that temptation.....

I have misgivings over the particular target chosen but I am not in position to change it and to be fair to my CEO, he is reacting to other pressures.

I don't think anyone can disagree with the sentiment of halving all accidents, but assuming I can convince my CEO to move on the timescale, what would be a more realistic target? If a few key pieces fall into position and we might be 18 months to 2 years away without them we might never get there and I don't have a huge amount of direct control of these 'pieces' (and I would not want to sell either scenario at this moment in time). What timescale is it reasonable to expect a significant change the culture of 900 people?

Thanks again for any comments.

Mark

Mark - as others have alluded - it is easier to halve the number of accidents reported than it is to persuade senior execs that a doubling of reports would actually be a more worthwhile target...

The American business that bought my previous (UK- based) employer imposed a draconian witch-hunt style investigation and follow-up after every reported incident. Everyone (from management to shop floor soon reached the conclusion that it was easier for all concerned to simply not report...

And lo the figures did look good for a while....

But the same American employer had 11 guys on site at BP texas City who lost their lives because BP had imposed a similarly effective accident reduction target culture.

And weren't Network Rail recently severely criticised for 'artificially' reducing their accident figures by failure to report????

I seriously think you need to be very careful indeed about accepting the stated target - potentially it could be your company on the line for Corporate Manslaughter for deliberately creating a culture which discouraged the reporting of (and learning from) accidents. In my own view (not sure whether this would be reflected in prosecution for CM court) there is nothing more calculated to cause a poor safety culture than such a draconian imposition of arbitrary accident reduction targets.

Steve

....and following on on Steve's comments, have a look at

http://www.osha.gov/pls/...e=SPEECHES&p_id=2218

As Kieran says, check out Dom Coopers book and visit the b-safe website. I you want to talk to someone in the uk then contact Ryder-Marsh. good guys with a positive approach.

Of course they will want to sell you something but it is worth a listen especially if you have, as you say, cultural problems.

Yes, I am in the "behavioural" business but not in the UK (unless you want to pay my air fare) And I hereby deny knowing Tim Marsh, nor do I know the names and birthdays of his 17 children.

Merv

Thank you to everyone who responded.

I must say I was a little surprised at the response - I had expected more than 14 posts (a couple of them were mine) on a topic that will be close to all our hearts and I had assumed there would be some level of debate (i.e. is it a reasonable target, is it the right target, how do other CEO's performance manage safety, have other Companies achieved this target and how did they do it). Does anyone else have anything else to add before this topic is consigned to the depths of the discussion forum back catalogue?

Thanks in advance for any extra comments.