In today's municipal insurance market (if you believe there still is one) property and casualty insurance premiums are doubling and tripling — and thats if you're lucky. Many municipalities can not obtain insurance at any price. Well, there's a lot of blame that can be spread around for this condition but we cannot change the fact that it is here and will continue to be this way well into the foreseeable future.

Now is not the time to worry about what happened, but rather "how can I improve my municipality's insurance program in the future". What is it your municipality can do to control your individual cost? The answer is implementing a strong safety management program. This does not show results the first day, but rather takes time. However, the insurance market place will afford you a lot of time — time that you can use now to take positive steps toward controlling future costs.

For a municipal insurance program to be successful it must have management involvement in a loss control and safety program. This involvement must be sincere and obvious to employees if the loss control program is to impact the bottom line. Why? Because most accidents (employee injury, liability or property damage) are caused by unsafe acts of people not unsafe conditions in the work environment. So, how do we change the attitudes of employees toward doing their job safely? How does a supervisor motivate an employee to work safely?

Motivating is the work a manager does to inspire people to take required action. It is that part of his job which energizes people. It's the sum of all things he does to get "people action". If we want people action, we must take people action.

Louis Allen, in his book on management styles, outlined a number of principals that apply to loss control management that are necessary to understand if we are to impact on controlling accident losses in our municipality.

PRINCIPAL OF COMMUNICATIONS — "Motivation to accomplish results tends to increase as people are informed about matters affecting those results".

We all set improvement goals. Such as reducing loss time accidents in the fire department by 30% or vehicular accidents in the street department by 40%. However, how often do we communicate what these goals are to the people who actually will have to accomplish them. People want to know what's going on; communication gives meaning to the job. When people know what the goals are, and what progress is being made toward them, it's much easier to feel like a real and important part of the team.

PRINCIPAL OF RECIPROCATION — "People tend to be motivated to accomplish the results you want, to the extent you show interest in the results they want to achieve".

If we want people to be interested in our goals, we must show a strong and sincere interest in their goals. The more we know about the needs and desires of our employees, the easier we can relate our goals to their personal accomplishments.

PRINCIPAL OF RECOGNITION — "Motivation to accomplish results tends to increase as people are given recognition for their contributions to those results".

People get more satisfaction from their work when they know their efforts are appreciated. When we give sincere credit to a person who has earned it, we are making it clear that we consider him or her an important individual. Recognition for safe behavior serves as a reward and reinforces that behavior.

Part of safety management is putting these management principles to work month by month, week by week, day by day, and hour by hour. Taking this kind of people action is the most powerful means for getting people to take action — positive action in reducing accidents in our municipalities. Of paramont importance is applying the "Principal of Recognition" for the purpose of accomplishing behavioral changes in employees. By recognizing safe behavior supervision can increase the probability of that behavior being repeated.

SAFE BEHAVIOR REINFORCEMENT

The psychological basis for positive behavioral reinforcement is amazingly simple — "BEHAVIOR IS INFLUENCED BY IT'S EFFECTS" (for complete

November 1985 / Illinois Municipal Review / Page 27

details, read B. F. Skinner's Best Seller, BEYOND FREEDOM AND DIGNITY.) In government and business, this can be stated in practical terms "a person's performance is influenced by the results of that performance." This means that when a specific job performance results in a pleasurable experience or "reward," those results reinforce that behavior. On the other hand, when job performance does not result in pleasurable recognition or reward, the lack of results decreases the likelihood of repetition of that behavior.

Utilizing safe behavior reinforcement changes attitudes. Safe behavior reinforcement requires that a supervisor do more than just tell, it requires that he sell.

ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE

All too often, employees are treated as though pain-avoidance is their only important motivating force. It often seems that management feels employees do their job correctly only because of fear of what will happen to them if they don't. There's a lot of negative emphasis on punishing measures taken to try to stop behavior that is unproductive, unsafe, or undesirable. Carried to extremes, this philosophy says that people will work correctly only under threat, and that they require punishment to keep them working.

However, we now know that a person's job should not be so completely meaningless and devoid of interest that only the threat of punishment makes him or her do it.

Positive behavior reinforcement stresses productive performance, safe behavior, and desirable behavior. It's a proven way to motivate employees in making this kind of behavior a habit. In a way, human motivation is somewhat like walking up a "down escalator" — the minute you stop, you start going backward.

Let's assume a municipal supervisor, faced with a challenge of improving safety, decides to give this positive approach a try. How can he go about it? A typical sequence of steps would be something like this:

1. DETERMINE YOUR POSITIVE GOAL

Be sure it's a positive goal, such as "improve safe job performance in street department". Then define the goal in as specific terms as possible. Try to state exactly how much of an improvement is expected. The reason it's critically important to be as specific as possible is that it gives a measurable goal to shoot for, so progress can be checked, proven and compared, and communicated to employees accomplishing the goal (principle of communication).

2. SELECT THE PERFORMANCE (BEHAVIOR) YOU WANT

This is the behavior required to achieve the goal. It might be to have street department employees follow safe job procedures as outlined in a job safety analysis; or that eye protection be worn when using grinders in the shop.

3. DIVIDE THE PERFORMANCE GOAL INTO STEPS OR LEVELS

This pinpointing of desired actions enables "behavioral recognition: and permits that behavior to be built or developed by degrees, and gives more frequent opportunity for reinforcing it. Each step offers a person a sense of "achievement" rather than having to wait until the entire operation is learned before gaining the self-esteem that is fed by recognition from other people.

4. SELECT THE REINFORCEMENT TO BE USED

This is simply the reward the municipal worker will receive for demonstrating proper performance. They can range from a simple expression of recognition to some form of material reward (notes, letters regarding the worker's accomplishment in personnel folder, etc.)

5. REINFORCE THE DESIRED PERFORMANCE

This simply means to start looking for the performance you are trying to incorporate among your employees, and recognizing it immediately as it occurs. Making a habit of looking for performance to reward may be the hardest part of this whole positive behavior reinforcement process.

Many managers and supervisors have been unconsciously trained through prior experience to watch for undesired performance. After years of looking for what's wrong, it's difficult to start watching for what's right.

6. KEEP IT UP

This simply means the more the performance and reinforcement are repeated, the greater the likelihood that the performance will become habitual.

The existence of an effective loss control program geared toward reducing unsafe acts by employees in a municipality does not happen by chance or luck. It takes work and commitment by municipal managers and supervisors. The application of safe behavior motivation programs in your municipality can reduce your accident losses. It can be the vehicle, if implemented now, which can in the future greatly improve your municipality's ability to obtain the type of municipal insurance program you need at reasonable cost. There is no quick fix to the municipal insurance dilemma. However, there are solutions — long term, that can help avoid the problems in the future.

Page 28 / Illinois Municipal Review / November 1985