Get safety problems to the surface: using human resource practices to improve injury reporting.

This study examines the relationship that employee perceptions of rewards, training, and selection have with reported and unreported employee injuries requiring doctor's attention, first aid cases, and near misses. Additionally, this study examines the relationship of selection and training with injury reporting beyond that of rewards, because reporting relationships have not previously been examined in either of these areas. Study results indicate that employee perception of training is associated with a decrease in the number of unreported injuries including doctor's attention, first aid cases, and near misses, and employee perceptions of selection are associated with a decrease in the number of unreported first aid cases. Both training and selection were related to the number of unreported injuries above and beyond the effect of rewards for safety. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Keywords: HR Practices; Injury Reporting; Organizational Safety

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Each year employers lose billions of dollars to employees missing work due to injuries ($132.1 billion in 2001; National Safety Council [NSC], 2002), as well as losing man-hours from missed work (130,000,000 in 2001; NSC, 2002). In an effort to minimize these exorbitant costs and to maintain production and service, reduction of injuries in the workplace has been a continuing concern for organizations. Researchers have found that rewarding for safe behaviors, training employees on safety procedures and the importance of safe behaviors, and selecting employees with safety as a priority have all been associated with a reduction in injuries (DeJoy, Searcy, Murphy, & Gershon, 2000; Hale & Hale, 1972; Harshbarger & Rose, 1991; Iacono, 1966; McAfee & Winn, 1989). Previous research, however, has rarely looked at the concern of whether injuries of various degrees of seriousness are actually being reported to the organization as a result of these practices. Past research has primarily focused on outcomes as either a reduction in injuries (Harshbarger & Rose, 1991) or overall numbers of safe behaviors (DeJoy et al., 2000; Zohar, 2002).

The safety literature looking at rewards, although limited (Sinclair & Tetrick, 2004), is the primary strand of safety research that has examined how organizational safety practices may impact whether injuries are reported or unreported within an organization. This research has sparked the beginning of a debate on whether rewards help to actually reduce injuries or just "hide" the injuries due to a lack of reporting, which is associated with the peer pressure an employee feels not to "ruin" the potential safety incentive. Previous research on safety training and selecting for safety has not made this distinction between whether or not employees are actually reporting injuries.

The importance of safe behaviors as precursors to larger safety outcomes has been noted (Gallagher & Myers, 1996). However, the extent to which employees are likely to report injuries, or near misses, at a more minor level has not been explored. Researchers have argued that these "near misses" are an indicator of the longer term organizational safety outcomes (i.e., reportable injuries). When minor injuries are unreported, and remain untreated, this may result in more serious injuries over time (Gallagher & Myers, 1996). Thus, whether minor injuries and near misses are reported or unreported to an organization may be vital to its ability to help impact longer term safety outcomes.

This article focuses on three primary issues. First, the research expands the examination of employee injury reporting beyond rewards to include training and selection. Specifically, it examines the relationship of training and selection to injury reporting after accounting for the effects of rewards. Second, the research focuses not just on the number of injuries reported, but also examines the number of injuries unreported by employees. Third, this study examines the impact of employee perceptions of these human resource (HR) practices on reporting injuries at multiple levels of injury seriousness (including Occupational Safety and Health Administration [OSHA] reportable injuries, first aid injuries, and near misses).

Rewards

The importance of rewarding for safety has remained highly controversial (Sinclair & Tetrick, 2004). The purpose of tying compensation or rewards to safety is to raise employees' awareness of safety issues as well as emphasize the importance of safe behaviors within the organization. The difficulty with tying compensation to safety outcomes is in making sure that increased safe behavior, rather than reduced injury reporting, is what is being compensated. Some researchers indicate that rewarding for safety is actually counterproductive (Collinson, 1999; Kohn, 1993), whereas others find support for a positive relationship between incentives and improved safety (McAfee & Winn, 1989).

Studies have found that incentives or rewards improved reported numbers of injuries. Harshbarger and Rose's (1991) study examined two different companies. The first company implemented "green stamps" that employees received after one month with no lost time accidents. These stamps could be redeemed for merchandise in catalogs. Lost time accidents for this organization were reduced by 95% and workers' compensation costs were cut by 89%. The second company provided small cash incentives for each month without a lost time accident. Lost time accidents for this organization were reduced by 97% and costs were reduced by 71%. Thus, both programs resulted in very successful safety outcomes. The cultures of these organizations changed to ones where the employees exhibited great pride in their safety performance, indicating that the symbolic value of the incentive programs in these companies was as important to the employees as its actual cash value.

Roberts and Bea (2001) addressed the importance of looking at the research on highly reliable organizations (organizations that have consistently fewer accidents occurring at their facilities than what is expected for their industry). One of the basic things these organizations do to help enhance reliability is to design reward and incentive systems to recognize both costs of failures and benefits of reliability. Perhaps the best support of the use of incentives is McAfee and Winn's (1989) review article of 24 different studies that used incentives and/or feedback on safety for employees. Favorable results (higher usage of protective equipment or lower numbers of injuries) were found in each of these studies. Several of the studies supported the use of safety incentives in reducing reported injuries. Yet none of the studies identified above used unreported injuries as an outcome variable.

Other studies' findings have indicated that rewards may be tied with a higher number of unreported injuries. In Collinson's (1999) study, findings indicated that employees were encouraged not to report injuries when bonuses were tied to safety. That study was done on a North Sea oil installation, where employees received a cash bonus if no serious injuries were incurred by a crew for the previous year. Collinson found that because injuries incurred by a single individual affected the entire department, employees were pressured not to report injuries so the rest of their crew would receive a bonus. Employees in that study indicated that safety suggestions and positive safety behaviors should be rewarded, rather than incentives being taken away when injuries occurred. Pransky, Snyder, Dembe, and Himmelstein (1999) further indicated that rewarding for safety may cause employees to underreport minor events/injuries that may affect their reward outcomes. In their survey of 110 workers at three industrial plants, only 5% had officially reported an injury, although more than 85% claimed to have experienced some sort of injury symptoms due to their work. They noted that safety incentive programs need to be designed to encourage injury reporting and improve plant safety.

Direct, consistent links between behaving safely and receiving rewards from the company may reinforce safe behaviors, as well as increase the perceived importance of safety within the organization. Hofmann, Morgeson, and Gerras (2001) indicated that when supervisors reward behaviors (implicitly or explicitly), subordinates learn what is important and come to view their leaders' safety values by what is rewarded. Rewarding safe behaviors encourages safe actions, rather than discouraging the reporting of accidents. Advocates of using safety incentives argue that these incentives should focus attention on areas of concern, promote safety awareness, and provide recognition for good performance (Cooper, 2001).

Pulling from both sides of the debate, it is likely that when rewards are in place, the number of reported injuries should decrease due to an overall emphasis on reinforcing safe behaviors and reducing actual numbers of injuries. However, it is also reasonable to expect that when reward programs are in place, the number of actual injuries that remain unreported to an organization may increase--especially in regard to more minor injuries.

Hypothesis 1a: Positive employee perceptions of the extent to which their organization rewards for safe behaviors will be associated with a decrease in reported injuries (injuries requiring doctor's attention, first aid cases, and near misses).

Hypothesis 1b: Positive employee perceptions of the extent to which their organization rewards for safe behaviors will be associated with an increase in unreported injuries (injuries requiring doctor's attention, first aid cases, and near misses).