At Bakery, More Dough Slashes Job Injuries : Workplace: The company started a pay incentive program and saw workdays lost to injuries fall 82% in a year.
At Ottenberg’s Bakers Inc., the goal is to make gaining weight the greatest occupational hazard.
In an industry traditionally fraught with on-the-job hurts that range from pulled muscles to repetitive-motion injuries to delivery truck accidents, bakeries also feel the strain of high insurance premiums, workers’ compensation claims and lost workdays because of injuries.
But an innovative safety program at Ottenberg’s that includes cash payouts to employees for not becoming injured has shown in its first year that the bakery business doesn’t have to be that way. The number of workdays lost to injury fell 82% from 1988 to 1989, the bakery company said.
“In the last five years, our safety record has not been good,” said Donald E. Brown, chief financial officer for Ottenberg’s. “We’ve had more than our fair share of injuries.”
As a result, insurance and workers’ compensation became a primary issue at the bakery about a year ago, about the time Brown joined the company. When he came on board at Ottenberg’s, he said, the company’s insurance and workers’ compensation costs were “worse than any average bakery” and “out in the stratosphere” compared to other industries. “And no one wants to insure you because of your record,” he said.
Ottenberg’s, the biggest wholesale supplier of bread, rolls and baked goods in Washington, has annual revenue of $20 million and 200 employees. While Brown would not reveal the bakery’s insurance costs, he said, a year ago Ottenberg’s had to cut those costs significantly. “It’s just too many loaves of bread,” he said.
Money seemed to be the only incentive. “We’ve gone through the T-shirts and the hats,” said Ron Currie, operations manager for the bakery, referring to safety promotions. “They just don’t seem to have that much effect.”
In January, 1989, the company began an incentive program that rewards the employees of departments with no lost-time injuries--injuries that result in the employee’s missing work the next day.
After a department goes 110 days without any lost-time injuries, each of the workers in the department receives a $20 bonus. After 230 days with no lost-time injuries, they get a $30 bonus and after a year, each employee gets $50. One lost-time injury and the count of days drops to zero, with no bonuses.
Like any business that involves manual labor, Brown said, Ottenberg’s had some employees who would chronically miss work from an injury. But with the new system, “the peer pressure is great,” he said. “The other employees say, ‘If I’ve got to prop him up with a broomstick, (he’s coming to work).’ ”
The program seems to be working: Ottenberg’s employees missed 253 days because of injuries in 1989, compared to 1,384 days in 1988.
The bakery company is not alone. “Many of our member companies are . . . designing programs to reduce lost-time incidents to get their worker comp costs down,” said Kevin Burke, director of industrial and regulatory affairs for the American Bakers Assn. of Washington.
While most of those programs are educational and geared toward employee awareness of job risks, Burke said, the association encourages innovative programs such as that at Ottenberg’s. “Every company has to tailor its program to its own operation. . . . The cost of the safety program is well worth the investment.”
The Ottenberg’s program also has become a form of profit sharing, Brown said, which improves morale at the plant and also has helped with the bakery’s overall efficiency. If the program continues its success, the company probably will increase the bonuses after two years, he said.
In the end, he said, “it all really boils down to dollars.”
