3 Steps to Controlling Your Safety Scores
Your Safety Scores have gone through the roof! The provincial profile is above the acceptable threshold; you have at least one Alert on the CSA/SMS website. Like WTF! What happened and what are you to do about it? As a Safety Consultant, I’m asked this all the time!
Step 1: Get it all on the spreadsheet.
Alright. You want to download the scores from the CSA/SMS site. Now you need to add your Provincial Profile to the mix. In many provinces, this is a manual process. Once you have downloaded the CSA/SMS scores, you will have the template to follow in the way of a spreadsheet. Take a good look at the “Violation Summary” tab of the downloaded spreadsheet. The Violation Summary is a great place to enter your Provincial Profile or Canadian Safety Score information. I urge you to use the same format. Assign a “Basic” to each provincial infraction. Enter all information for a two-year or twenty-four month period. This length gives you information to analyze.
By putting the Canadian Safety Score information on the same spreadsheet as the US violations, you will get a much better picture of your companies activity and infractions.
Step 2: Analyze
Now you want to go through the information presented. Decide which “Basic” you will tackle first. Or maybe it is an individual driver that you need to speak to and train. But train in what.
The analysis will tell you either which “Basic” or which driver(s) need training and in what subjects. Yes, you analyze the information, and then you decide what you will do with the information. Do you train a mechanic, driver or dispatcher? Or perhaps, you terminate an individual when you see how many violations they have put onto your record. You do need now to take action.
Step 3: Take Action
Because you can now see what is wrong or what violations your fleet is getting, you now need to take action. You are now going to design a training program to lower your Safety Scores and 
correct the most violated Basic. You may now terminate a relationship with an individual because of the drivers’ record. Please remember, that if you hired a person, which could be a dispatcher, mechanic or driver you thought that they were a great fit for your company. So if you terminate the same person, you are now admitting that the hiring of that person was a mistake. Yes, an error that you made.
I never take severing a relationship lightly. I know that every firing affects much more people than the one terminated. In most cases, you are affecting a family with a spouse and children. That is never a good feeling. So take the termination route as a last resort. After all, you are affecting the whole family; you are telling the rest of the drivers that they can be fired as well. The firing is sending a message. If you discharge a driver that everyone thinks “About Time,” then that is likely to say that you are tolerant. If you fire a driver, and the rest of the force thought was one of the good drivers, then they may not be as loyal as you need them to be. So you see, a termination does send a message. You need to be sure that it is the right message. I also remind you that every termination is admitting that the hiring was a mistake. This whole process can seriously affect company morale. Be careful. It is often better and less expensive to train someone. It sends many messages to the rest of the employees.
Call Me
If you need help finding the download location, please reach out to me. As always, if you have a question get in contact with me.