QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
DR. MARRAS: I'd like to, at this point, open up the floor to questions on any of these issues or any new issues and feel free to synthesize between areas, too, because I think we have some very common issues and problems that need to be addressed here.
What I ask is when you step up to the microphone to ask a question is that you first state your name and tell us where you're coming from, for the record, and we'll be glad to answer.
Sue.
Q: I'd like to ask Eric how you get management commitment.
MR. FRUMIN: That was the main question that the audience in our workshop had. Here are some of the answers.
First of all, the obvious: The workers' comp dollars were unsupportable for these businesses and it didn't take much to get them to see that. The horse was already out of the barn at that point.
In another situation, the value of worker involvement expanded to outside the ergonomics area. I forget which of the management saw the wisdom of that, but the fact that there was some overlap there was apparently useful.
In the case of Sequins, International, again, a small employer of less than 200 workers' in the urban environment, the availability of a multi-employer, labor-management negotiated fund to provide matching funding for investments was critical, as well as the union's support and doing the training.
I think we have seen other examples in other industries of multi-employer, single union, or multi-union funds or joint efforts where unions can provide training. The construction industry is another example.
These are things that if they are organized correctly and are promoted properly, they can be very helpful.
One person was able to convince the employer that OSHA was coming with or without a standard some day, and it was better to fix the problem before they get there. So if anyone has any qualms about pointing out the importance of OSHA as a force of this issue, it's worth pointing it out forever.
Also, the union status as a partner, being both capable of providing training and willing to take some responsibility to help out, was an important factor in one case.
Last of all, I believe it was Gail Sater from Red Wing who pointed out, that when she was able to develop some cost allocation models, that would really take the costs out of the so-called corporate accounts and put them back in the plants, and even trace it back to the individual's supervisors and affect their bonuses, then it began to get a lot more of a response, and I know this has come up as an issue in other companies.
How workers' comp costs are allocated - away from central corporate processing and back to the facilities - is a difficult issue. It's often complicated by the bizarre accounting procedures in the workers' comp system. But if you can find a way to do it, it can have a big effect in ensuring that the supervision at the front line and other people at the facilities need to be held accountable for failing to pursue ergonomic interventions.
DR. JOSEPH: I'd like to add one quick thing to that. I know the question was focused, but I think it's such an important issue that we need to look at a lot of the tricks of the trade, and you mentioned a number of them.
One of the things that we found, there was one particular manager in this case, one of these real world examples, that we talked about ergonomics, and he said, yeah, yeah, yeah, and this person wasn't particularly a bad person, he just had a lot of other things on his mind. He had competing values or issues to deal with.
One thing that we did one day in our focus group or a forum, actually, was showed him the cost per unit of workers' comp, and basically it was an interpretation issue. He saw this big number and said, big numbers at Ford are not a big deal a lot of times, because we spend a lot of money on a lot of things. But then when he saw the cost per unit and he saw he was charging his engineers with taking a penny off of a car, and all of sudden you had $30 opportunity for a vehicle, he stopped what he was doing and he said, what did you say?
And the next thing we know we're talking, and the next thing we know we hired ergonomists for the division, and they put somebody in product, and things happened. Sometimes it's just a matter of interpretation of the data for them because they are looking at certain things certain ways, and you need to do that for them.
MR. SCHNEIDER: I would just add one more thing.
In our industry, in one of the case examples, one of the things that drove us was the interest on the owner's part, because the owner is paying the bill and the construction industry, ultimately, who is going to build this project. So having an enlightened owner really made a big difference in the opportunities that were available to do interventions on that particular site.
But in construction, like in other industries, the comp costs really are driving a lot of this. I mean, like the average carpentry contractor, it varies tremendously from state to state, but they're paying about $25 in comp premiums per $100 of payroll. It's astounding when you think about it.
In some cases in the ironworking trade, structural steelworkers are paying over $100 in comp costs per $100 of payroll, so it's a lot of money.
DR. MARRAS: Any other questions?
Q: I'm Shannon Isles from Iowa State University. I'm a student.
You were talking about back belts. You had quite a discussion. I read a couple studies that said there's more injuries due to the back belts being worn because people feel that they should be able to lift more and they're trying to do more than they can.
I was wondering what was said about that if you could let me know?
MR. SCHNEIDER: I'll tell you, there are so many people in this audience that are more qualified than I am to answer this question, including Bill Marras and Marie Sweeney, and a whole lot of other people here.
I don't think there have been a lot of studies looking at back belts causing injuries, although there's certainly a lot of people that talk about that, and there have been a number of studies in the literature that discuss whether back belts can or could possibly have a preventive effect.
Right now, my read on the literature is there's not a lot of evidence to show that. There was one recent study that was published by Kraus on Home Depot, but that study, like a lot of studies, has some significant problems with it. I think we could spend probably the next six hours discussing this, and I hope Bill and others will chime in.
MR. McCAULEY: Let me chime in.
We still use back belts. Not so much to prevent injuries but probably a sugar-coated pill because it reminds them that they should be using the proper lifting technique, and we make them go through the medical office to get their belts so that they're measured properly.
They're told how to wear it, because you look at a lot of people and they are wearing it more like a halter than as a back support, and so we make sure that they're properly educated.
We make sure we tell them, too, that it doesn't make them Atlas. I think you're point was well made, that everybody sees a weight lifter on television, then they have to have that big leather belt on. We've even gotten away from the leather belt into the more comfortable back brace, if you might.
MR. CIMMINO: I'd like to throw a comment in there. To get a little different perspective on this, I'll start by loosely quoting Jerry Seinfeld when he talked about the invention of the helmet. What Jerry called the helmet was a monument to human stupidity.
The reason for that is people invented helmets for a reason, and the reason was because they were doing things, and people ended up cracking their heads open. Rather than stop doing the things that were causing their heads to crack open they invented a device to put on their head to stop them from cracking it open.
I think you could apply the same logic loosely to that of back belts, in that, rather than trying to figure out something to strap on to a person's body, to prevent them from hurting their backs, why don't we take a look at what they're doing and trying to make a change to their job and reduce the risk that way?
DR. MARRAS: David.
Q: My name is David Alexander. I'm with Auburn Engineers.
Frankly, looking at a group of a half a dozen manufacturing oriented representatives, the temptation is just too great. I've got to ask about costs.
What I'm interested in, and I'd like each person to respond, if you would, please: Are the costs so high now that simple cost reduction can drive the ergonomic efforts? In other words, is it a cost issue, in addition to a health and safety issue?
The second question is, once workers' comp is under control, are cost opportunities available to sustain the ergonomics initiatives or will they end at that point?
MR. FRUMIN: Dave, thank you. In general, Dave, thank you for your leadership in this field.
You've raised a critically important question. If costs are the sole driver or the primary driver, we see bizarre results, like the Virginia legislature disallowing compensability for carpal tunnel syndrome. This is bizarre.
So if that's how costs are to be controlled, and costs are the main driver, then we're going backwards faster than we can believe.
In some cases, costs are quite high, but costs are very much dependent upon awareness and compensability issue, depending on the states. In some cases they will not be an effective driver to get things started.
But once they're identified and allocated properly, yes, you have to make a business case for it, and that's the language of business. It's a free enterprise system. We're stuck with it, and so we might as well take advantage of it where we have the numbers.
On the other hand, again -- what we found in two of three cases was that while cost being a driver, the ergonomics program itself was a segue for management into some very innovative management changes. To me, the opportunity to tie quality management to job design is going to be a critically important motivator, particularly for firms which are under increasing stress and pressure on both the cost side and on quality and flexible production.
That's why I thought the product design workshop was interesting, because a lot of the key issues that we deal with in looking at quality also come up in product design. I was glad to hear some of the insights that Bill and the other people provided there: the issues of whether it's the process or the equipment or the parts that you're working with. The same things that you're dealing with in quality management, you're also dealing with in ergonomics.
DR. MARRAS: Yes, ma'am.
Q: Hi, I'm Laurie Rectanus with the General Accounting Office. One of the things Tom Albin had said this morning, and we heard through several of the presentations was this idea of prioritizing the jobs or processes that you need to fix or trying to establish a threshold of the risk or the hazard.
From everyone's presentation, it seems like everyone has a -- or at least it sounds like people have a separate ergonomics program in addition to their health and safety program, and I was curious to get some sense from those of you who have programs, I guess, how did you determine whether the extent to which you needed to take action in response to the magnitude of the problem and why did you feel if, in fact, it's so, that you needed a separate ergonomics program outside of your health and safety programs?
MR. McCAULEY: Let me try. Let me try that one.
When you look at ergonomic program, and the reason you separate the two, or at least the reason we do, is that it's easier to take a bite of a particular apple instead of trying to eat the whole bushel at one time.
Also, with the employee involvement, you're trying to educate those people so that they can focus on an item. If you try to make it so broad a spectrum for them to actually become knowledgeable and because, remember, these are people working out there on the line doing a particular line.
So you're trying to make them a specialist, if you might, and so that you're trying to focus their attention on one particular item.
Now, there are some plants, particularly if you have a smaller plant, and we have some small plants, and they're combined. It's an ergo Safety Committee.
But in larger plants, where you have larger problems by the mere size, then you try to have specialists and they're looking at strictly ergonomic problems and not trying to take so many things into consideration that you get nothing done. You know, you can overcrowd the plate so much that you're now just getting busy but you're never solving anything, and by taking bites you get to some kind of resolution also.
DR. JOSEPH: I think your question is actually an interesting question because, really, you're dealing with the concept of special emphasis. I think this morning Tom Albin from 3M talked about whether we want to put this together as part of the health and safety process. Ford has a health and safety process. I'm sure everybody else here does.
I'm talking to the choir, but the problem is you want a special emphasis because you need it and it gets to the cost question, I think. I don't know, Dave, where you are, but it gets to the issue of the cost question again.
To be honest with you, I think what happens is that industry makes a decision that this is a big enough problem, that it needs special emphasis to get it going, but the ultimate goal is to integrate it into the existing processes, to make it part of the core methods, how the company operates.
I think the greatest day at Ford Motor Company for ergonomics would be the engineers just do it and we don't have to bug them. That would be the greatest day. It eliminates my job, but I have three kids at home and a college education I've got to do, so hopefully it will be a little while longer, or else Bill will get me a job at Ohio State.
But that would be the thing that you need to look at is ergonomic theme, they do it, because it's part of what they think about, and that would probably end the program as a separate emphasis program. We do it all the time.
Asbestos, a couple years ago. What did we do? Have a lot of emphasis on it. Some people may say we've kind of backed off it, some other people may say we're just handling it as part of the regular health and safety duties. So it depends.
MR. SCHNEIDER: Let me suggest one thing, though. I think, to a certain extent, ergonomics is a different type of problem. People are approaching it differently than they have other health and safety problems in the past. I think when people had a noise problem at their plant or in their workplace, they didn't think about, as much as they do with ergonomics, about getting employees involved in identifying the problem.
They had a hygienist or somebody go out with a noise meter, and it was really an expert approach where experts would come in and analyze the problem and they'd make recommendations to management.
With ergonomics, I think there's a much greater recognition that you need to get employees involved, that if you don't get employees involved that it's going to fail. Therefore, I think we're starting from a different emphasis, a different angle.
So to incorporate into the traditional health and safety program was a little bit more difficult, putting a square peg into a round hole. So I think now, what I'm hopeful is maybe this ergonomic approach to solving problems will spread to other kinds of health and safety problems.
If there is some sort of integration, it'll rub off on the other health and safety problems in solving approaches.
DR. FRAGALA: I can tell you a little bit about the models in health care. In health care, we don't have a lot of people who specialize in ergonomics at a facility. So much of it is done through a committee of program effort.
You'll usually see a central safety committee and maybe a subcommittee or a program group that reports into that central safety committee, so that it is integrated into the comprehensive program, but there is a group dedicated to working with those problems, and I think that's going to continue for health care.
MR. FRUMIN: I think one of the questions you have to address, looking at this problem of compartmentalizing ergonomics into a corner is the issue of accountability and authority. If the people who can get something done in the workplace are working together on an ergonomics team, and there was a safety committee over here that was already in existence and the motivation to start an ergonomics program got a separate group up and running, fine, they're there. They're getting the job done and work it out.
If they're being marginalized, and it was just a superficial effort, then you need to have whatever line of authority in a joint labor management situation, a joint committee, intervene and to have responsibility for it. So it probably depends on the politics of the workplace as to who's going to get something done.
I notice, for instance, in a recent Big Three negotiations there were some different approaches to revising the health and safety programs at GM versus Ford versus Chrysler because of the issue of ensuring that the accountability of supervision and the union leadership in the plant vary from company to company.
I think at GM they decided to have a new plant steering committee, which had to take some more responsibility for making sure that these programs worked better.
We saw the same thing at Fieldcrest Cannon in a case study we had, where if the Ergonomics Committee couldn't do it, the Labor Management Committee, sort of the senior union company group at the plant, was going to have to pay attention to it on a more regular basis.
So it's not really a cookie cutter question or a marginalization as much as, where's the power, who's going to get the job done? If they're not getting the job done, how are we going to get their attention?
DR. JOSEPH: I'd like to add one more little thing, and that is, I think there's a bit of a difference. Scott, you touched on that quite a bit, on the issue. In noise, there is a measuring stick. We know how to do it, it's fairly scientific and proven and it's there. You can take a dosimeter out to the plant floor, teach somebody how to use it, and get a result pretty easily.
The problem in ergonomics there's no charcoal tube, so to speak, for it yet. Because of that, it's very important the employee involvement is there because they know the job. They become sort of the analysis or the evaluation mechanism that we have, and that's another reason why special emphasis has to be there, because you've got to ask them.
We have this charcoal tube, you just walk out there, say, oh, it's not a problem or it is a problem.
But ergonomics is more personal, too. I think that's what you're getting to, Scott, and I think that's another reason for the problem. You go to an office workplace and compare that to an industrial workplace, and you know that the office workers are hurting. You think, man, you compare the two; this person in the industrial workplace isn't complaining but the office person is. You know you've got to fix them both, though.
The charcoal tube is just not there to measure it. So I think if we ever did develop a charcoal tube, it may change ergonomics a bit, but I don't think we're likely to for a long time.
MR. CIMMINO: I'd like to throw one more comment out there. It's the fact that even before there was a, quote, "ergonomics program," unquote, there was ergonomics practice. It's just a matter of how well people did it. I'll give you a couple of examples.
Office furniture. Somebody went through a selection process and picked what they felt was the best office furniture. Maybe they didn't put emphasis on ergonomics but it was one of the things that they thought of. If somebody looked at a desk and it was two feet off the ground, they wouldn't buy it, and there's a reason for that. But they didn't put a lot of emphasis into the height of the desk.
Hand tools. We already have people who evaluate and purchase hand tools. If somebody looked at a pneumatic drill and the thing weighed 50 pounds, they probably wouldn't purchase the drill, and there's a reason for that. It's too heavy for the guy to lift.
So it's not a matter of implementing ergonomics, it's a matter of improving and educating and refining those skills, that may be a little rough and something a little bit better.
DR. MARRAS: Up here, we have a question on the right.
Q: My name is Jim Burke. I'm with Ford Motor Company. One of the things that Brad mentioned earlier today was Ford's establishment and continued improvement on a video library of solutions.
I think one of the things, because of Ford's size, we found that there are common problems. We don't have plants, different committees trying to solve similar problems that there might have been a solution for in the past, some better than others. Why reinvent the wheel twice?
We can get a repository for these solutions, people can review it, try and find out if something has already been done.
I have a twofold question, basically:
Are the other industries doing that? Something came up interesting today. I saw a presentation from the garment industry, and they had a lot of problems with cutting, CTD, and so forth. Well, gee, guess what? I think Brad could testify that for upholstery in the car industry we had a lot of the same problems.
Wouldn't it have been nice if we could have gone on the web to OSHA and looked at what the garment industry is doing with these similar problems, and can we use them in the automotive industry? Is the industry approaching OSHA, can we establish a web site for these type of ergonomic solutions?
MR. FRUMIN: Well, actually, it comes in full circle. The chair that was installed in this one case study was one that was developed by a supplier, BioFit. Buy chairs from BioFit because our members were making them. That chair was developed through a competition that was run by the University of Michigan for Ford for its upholstery plants because, as a result of the UAW/Ford joint program, there was a $50,000 competition to make a chair for sewing machine operators because there wasn't a good one on the market.
So we appreciate the interest of Ford and the UAW, and we want to give it back.
Yes. This kind of spreading of technology, technology dissemination, diffusion, is critically important, and we can do it. But, you know, there are a lot of people who aren't here today at this conference who desperately need the information. For them, it's not a question of reinventing the wheel, it's a question of getting them to stand up and take notice in the first place.
It's not because they don't know. Web sites alone aren't going to do it, and the sooner those of us in this room get started with a joint effort to tell the world at large and the Neanderthals, in particular, that we need an OSHA standard, and we need an OSHA outreach program in general, the sooner we'll get the kind of interest so that people will want to know what's going on out there.
You can put up a web site, you can build it, but if the employers aren't coming, then they aren't reinventing anything. We have to get their attention in the first place.
So we're in kind of a tough situation at the moment, and I hope all of us here can see our way clear to mounting that kind of pressure.
DR. JOSEPH: One comment on that. There was some data collected a couple of years ago about cost-effectiveness of these programs, and I keep hearing this issue and I keep hating to say it, but industry is run -- I think you mentioned it, Eric -- industry is run by costs and we have stockholders and all that good stuff.
The bottom line of it is that we probably need to make better cases because I think it's there. For sure it's there. I think Dave will talk something about some of the cost benefits anyway.
But if we can show it, they will come to the party, and I think that's part of it. But once you got them, once you snag them, you've got to take advantage of that snag because that time period where you got their attention is very short. I'm sorry to say that but that's just the way it is. There's a lot of things going on in history right now, with downsizing and everything else. Once you got their attention, take advantage of it.
DR. MARRAS: One caveat with respect to what was mentioned earlier. Ergonomics is situation dependent. So what works for one situation may not work for another one, and I think that's the only real danger with the solution, such as putting things like this on the web.
If you know how to use it appropriately and understand that this is a potential solution and not the only solution, then I'm all for it, but you've got to realize that every specific situation is different. What happens in Brad's plants, or even between his plants, in upholstery may be very, very different; different materials, different resistances, different compression, all kinds of things like that.
MR. McCAULEY: I'd be remiss if I didn't say something, too, as far as the State of North Carolina. And I'm not from North Carolina. But that's where we had our citation.
North Carolina OSH has gone in and they've created what they call the North Carolina Ergonomics Resource Center, and through that means, and they're doing it in cooperation with North Carolina State University, and what happens then, if a small employer asks a question of the Resource Center, what they normally do is provide the answers if they can; or they have the resources to refer them to other employers there in the state that have gone through the same issues.
Then we tell them what we have done and then let them tailor-make it to fit them and not just take our program and incorporate it, or listen to three or four different companies, and then try and do a piecemeal job that's going to best suit them. So some states are doing it through OSHA itself.
MR. SCHNEIDER: Let me just add. We are working with some of the Europeans to develop sort of a solutions data base for the construction industry, but there are other things going on. I know, for example, with the ADA taking hold, there's a group, I think it's in North Carolina, called the Job Accommodations Network -- West Virginia? I'm sorry -- and they have an 800 number, and you can call them, and I think they have a web site, and you can get information on accommodations for people that have disabilities which, in some ways, can be sometimes used to accommodate people who may not have as much strength or whatever to do a particular job.
So I think we're slowly going to -- I know the Canadians also were looking at; the Canadian Center was looking at developing a solutions data base, but I don't think that project went very far yet, but I know they were considering that. A lot of the information they had came from a group in Western Australia, called Work Safe Australia, that had developed a whole bunch of solutions, and they were put together by the Canadians with other ones.
DR. MARRAS: I think we have another question.
Q: My name is Gary Maddox, and I'm an occupational therapist. I work at a hospital.
I work a lot with injured workers, especially a lot of repetitive motion type syndromes. A lot of the workers that I see are workers who are deconditioned to begin with; overweight, they smoke a lot, they don't have good diets. A lot of this plays into the ergonomics that I try to teach them because I not only see that they have jobs that injure them but I also see that they have a home life that also injures them as well.
I guess from your perspective, from industry perspective, do you have health and wellness programs in your industries? To what extent are they effective, and how have you gone about setting those up?
MR. McCAULEY: Let me also try that one. When we went into North Carolina and put in the medical intervention, as far as ergonomics was concerned, our success was such that our medical director said, hey, if it works for worker's comp what about general medical coverage? In some of our larger plants now, we've actually put in medical centers, if you might, where that outside medical doctors come in, therapists come in.
One of our associates could be undergoing therapy, and instead of having to go to a therapist's office and lose time, they go to the medical center which is located right there by the plant, and they go through the therapy right there and then go right on back to work.
We have seen a drastic reduction, even in the medical claims now, and we're moving into the field where we're giving a prenatal and postnatal care for the women, naturally, there in the plants, and also now looking at getting into child care. Because we found out -- and, again, most of our areas are rural, and the people have to take off a day or a half a day at least to go see a medical doctor, and they lose money. So consequently they don't go until it gets into a real situation where more than likely it's going to require surgery, hospitalization, et cetera.
We're seeing now that, just like in ergonomics, early intervention prevents all that expense at a later date, plus the reception of the people that are making themselves available to this has been outstanding.
One last point: They have to pay for this. You know, they go to the doctor, and we have a ceiling on what they pay for each doctor's visit, and that's $5, and then the company subsidizes the rest of it. But our results are such that just in savings on group health claims it more than doubles the savings.
DR. JOSEPH: I think it's another one of these good questions to talk about for a long time, but just a couple summaries. We do have in plant with complete exercise rooms in the plant at Ford. They're basically in-plant exercise areas, and they're voluntary, and they come in, and we also have, we're looking at on-site rehab centers and things like that. But I think a bigger question is, it's almost a piece of the pie.
The solution is not intervention on the job only, it's not employee training and education, it's all of them.
I will use a case study to illustrate. This study comes from the vehicle parts shop, not ergonomics. It has nothing to do with ergonomics, but the paint engineer said, how are we going to do coating on the car? The first thing he said was, there's four or five major things you've got to do, and any one of them done improperly can have a negative impact on part quality.
The first thing was is keep the lint off the car, which means have the employee work with garments in the paint shop.
The second thing is have good coating materials, and so on and so on.
So it's a process and it's a system and includes, yes, most people are away from their jobs half the day. That's important.
The other side of the coin is, our employees are aging. The average age is 46, almost 50 years old, and we're bringing new ones, as the other ones are retiring. Those people are productive, the older workforce. In fact, we call them very experienced, and so that's another way to look at the same problem. They're older, so they may not have the same level of physical capability as some of the younger workers but, you know what, they build good cars despite this.
So that's what we're given. The cards were dealt, and we might as well make the jobs accommodate most of those folks.
MR. FRUMIN: Quickly. Prevention pays, right? We know that. On the other hand, don't oversell the usefulness of wellness programs, in terms of saving money. They're a good thing to do but there's a very limited payoff, especially in terms of the actual numbers of cases that are related to work-related risks. The risks from the job are much higher.
Barbara Silverstein and Tom Armstrong published a fairly rigorous evaluation of the wellness program at Johnson & Johnson's Enthicon subsidary some years ago. That's a pretty fancy wellness program and they found no effect as far as dealing with work-related health problems.
So it's a good thing to pay attention to for other reasons, but it's got limited payoff.
DR. MARRAS: We'll take a question from the side, please.
Q: Thank you. My name is Marcus Frohart. I'm from Micron Electronics over in Nampa, Idaho. I'll make my question pretty quick.
There's been some excellent data exchanged as a result of this conference. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to be at all of the different topics being discussed, but I was wondering if there were any plans to have some of that data published so that way we can refer to it?
DR. JOSEPH: Yes, Bill's going to publish it all.
MR. FRUMIN: I've been told that they're transcribing the conference, and there's going to be a proceedings from it. So we've been told that everybody should speak in the mikes and present these summaries because we'll get something back from OSHA.
DR. MARRAS: Okay. We have a question in the back, please.
Q: Carl Marian from Eugene, Oregon.
Scott was gracious enough to mention the Job Accommodation Network. It's available all across the country and all of the United States territories by a toll free phone number. That phone number is 1-800-526-7234. It's 1-800-526-7234. They were cooperating with the Canadians at one point to also provide that service throughout Canada, and I'm not sure if that's continued or not.
DR. MARRAS: Thank you. Next question, please.
Q: My name is Ian Chong. Our firm is Ergonomics, Incorporated. We're a consulting group. That's why we have such a creative name.
My question has to do with cost justification and just plain justification. Many of our clients are always involved with upper management. Upper management, like was stated before, are not ergonomists, nor do they know what ergonomics means. They look at the bottom line of the financial statement.
Many of our clients are really interested in what worker comp injuries and repetitive motion injuries and time off and all the associated things like that, really cost them.
When we do a project, we are often asked to try to track it. After we do a solution, our clients generally say we don't do a solution. Our clients generally say we don't want to spend any money on tracking, just do some more solutions. So we've never really had the opportunity to track anything significant.
We did do an informal study one time of one of our clients, and we found out that what injuries are really costing them are not twice the stated amount of medical intervention, time off, those type of things. It wasn't five times, it wasn't ten times, it came out to be about 20 times, which is really a significant number.
So my question to you learned gentlemen is do you have anything that resembles any kind of study or follow-up that would put some sort of numbers to these issues?
DR. MARRAS: Let me expand upon that question a little bit because that's very similar to a question I was asking, which has to deal with how one benchmarks and assesses the costs. Can you even measure these types of costs and benefits?
We've got a very dynamic world here. Record keeping is constantly changing. With increased recognition, you have increased reporting. We have shrinking workforces. changing profit profiles.
I guess a bigger question related to that one is what's a legitimate cost/benefit with all of these constantly changing variables? Can you even do it?
MR. SCHNEIDER: Let me just mention one thing. We've recognized that this is a problem in our industry and what we've done is we've set up an economics research network of about 20 economists who meet on a regular basis to talk about the economics in the construction industry and how that impacts safety and health.
Some of them are beginning to work on this problem of looking at ergonomics and the costs and the benefits of interventions. There was a study done on the indirect costs of accidents in the construction industry by Jimmy Hinze at the Construction Industry Institute many years ago, and found it was very high. I think it was about 10 times the direct costs.
These are all important questions that have to be looked at and we have to do more studies looking at the costs of interventions and the benefits and looking at what are all the extraneous costs and how do you measure them. A lot of them we can't really measure. We just have to sort of estimate what they are because there's just no good measurements for them.
For example, one of the things we need to look at is what happens when you make these changes in terms of productivity. We talk a lot about productivity improvements. In the construction industry, productivity is rarely, if ever, measured.
So there's a lot of things like that we need to quantify, and unfortunately very few people in the safety and health field have an economics background. I don't. But that's why we're setting up this network to try to get economists interested in these kind of problems and see what they can do to help us out.
MR. McCAULEY: I think it's a state of the mind how much your company is willing to spend on any injury. How many people do you have to injure before it becomes cost effective? How many people do you have to have lose their jobs because they can't carry on anymore before you change your process.
We looked at that and for us to sit there as professionals and try and tell upper management that we're going to get them an X percent of return on their investment is naive because you're playing with dough. It's going to change on you.
If you're sitting there, and you're actually concerned about the welfare of your people and how many people you're willing to sacrifice that year, then you may have something to argue about.
We've set it up in our company that we have three goals. The first goal is people, the second goal is product, the third goal is profitability, and if we watch after our people and do what's right by them, and do things that may not be cost effective, at that point, by saying that machine is worth and will return X number of dollars, we'll probably see it in the quality of the product that we're turning out, okay?
We'll probably also see it in the profitability because now we can charge the price for a quality product that the customer is willing to pay out there. A lot of it is intangible, and that's where the culture comes into play. Is your upper management really dedicated to safety or are they dedicated to the economists? Everything's got to be a return or they're not going to look at it.
I question then whether you're going to have a program or not anyway.
MR. SCHNEIDER: One other point is, you also have to think about how many of these costs are not being paid by the employer. I mean, if a worker gets injured in the construction industry and they move on to the next job and can't work for a couple weeks or it affects their quality of life at home, I mean, those things are not being paid for by the employer.
They're not being felt by the employer so it's real difficult sometimes to add those things in or to cost them out or to think about how they're going to affect economic decisions, to invest. It's a difficult issue.
MR. FRAGALA: We've had some successes in trying to measure costs because our workers' comp costs have been so high. Just looking at the direct costs associated with the occupational injury, the compensation payments, and the medical costs, we've seen significant cost savings.
What I've seen a lot of people do, you can spend a lot of time trying to model these indirect costs. As everybody said, it's very difficult to get an exact number, so what I've seen people do is take a conservative figure of at least four times greater.
We can measure our direct costs, and if we take a conservative number of at least four times greater in the health care industry, at least, we've seen significant cost savings from some of the programs we have put in place, but remember our workers' comp costs are very, very high.
MR. CIMMINO: I'd like to reinforce what Jim alluded to, which is in addition to the financial costs there is also a human cost, and when you look at workers' comp statistics and the injury rate statistics, every dot on that chart represents a human being, and when you lower the numbers on that chart it not only lowers your costs but then you also have a guy who is going to go home and have a catch with his kids rather than sit and put ice on his shoulder.
So I think that what management has to understand is that these costs aren't a given and is not simply a cost of doing business. They are controllable. There is an opportunity to reduce those costs.
To have a real commitment, to return a guy when he goes home at the end of the day and walks through the gate, we return him in the shape he was when he walked in because going home with parts that aren't functioning or missing or in a body bag, that's not part of the deal that somebody signs up for when they take a job.
They work hard. They don't make a whole lot of money and I don't think that's too much to ask for.
MR. FRUMIN: From the apparel industry, we can tell you that once you start basing your decisions solely on cost, you can quickly take a low road to a pretty disgusting way of doing business.
That's why we have some people working in slavery in this country. That's why we have 90 Thai women in the suburbs of Los Angeles enslaved in a garment shop. An industry doesn't have to function like that. We don't have to have sweatshop conditions in the poultry industry, the garment industry, in auto parts, in a whole lot of industries, but they exist because people decide they're going to run their business based on cost.
We have ethics, they ought to be there. If they're not going to be there, we have a law. That's what OSHA's about, and we bloody well ought to get on with an OSHA standard so that cost does not become the sole motivator or criteria. If we can't get that together as a country, then we ought to ask where the hell we're going.
DR. JOSEPH: Since everybody is commenting, I guess I will, too. I think the way to properly answer that question is a total cost to model. Cost doesn't necessarily mean dollars. Cost can mean a number of issues but there's a cost of running that company in terms of making it work, making that company stay around a while; making that company produce a quality product.
Then we've got to get rid of this idea of workers' comp costs, medical costs, and this cost. I think those are all valuable as part of the total equation of total cost.
I know Ford now is talking more about total costs models. They mentioned this when we talk to employees and use it a lot with a lot with the engineers when discussing ergonomics -- total cost, that we should put this in or put that in.
I think that when we understand it better -- I don't understand it that well; I'm not an economist either, and I don't even understand the term, I didn't do that well on the first class of it, but the bottom line of it is I do understand there are values that you can put on these things, and we can probably take a look at it and see what adds up.
It doesn't have to be a number, but it adds up somewhere, and we need to understand that.
DR. MARRAS: With that, I think we're getting to the point in the program where we have to end this.
I'd like to thank all of the participants in the panel for their insight, and we really appreciate your summaries as well as your insight.
I'd also like to thank OSHA and NIOSH for putting on a very, very nice first day of this event.
Finally, I'd like to remind everyone that we start again tomorrow at 8:30 in the morning. Thank you.
