| Intervention in occupational health
and safety Patricia Canney Suratep Administradora de Riesgos Profesionales in Colombia is an insurance company responsible for the promotion of occupational health and safety for those companies that voluntarily subscribe their workers for compensation, health attention and OHS prevention and promotion programs. Started in 1995 under the Social Security Reform, it has approximately five million workers under coverage all around the country. With this model, Suratep intends to go beyond the control of work-related accidents, helping companies in the process of competitiveness, maximising occupational health and safety benefits for workers and improving productivity, quality and working conditions. The concept "zero injury" is a concept parallel to "zero defects" under the total quality approach. The achievement of the goal "zero injury" has an immediate reward when management promotes health and safety and when workers respond consistently towards achieving the results. "Zero injury" must be understood as a process of continuous improvement that requires information systems in order to control and modify those risk factors (in the individual and in the workplace) that contribute to the occurrence of work-related accidents. "Cero Accidentes de Suratep" is an intervention in occupational health and safety, an approach whose components or parts should be interrelated and oriented towards the same goal (zero injuries). These components were defined as follows after an extensive literature review of all those intervention models in different parts of the world:
Management commitment Management involvement in order to assure the success of the model and the assignment of responsibilities. CERO accidents is an alliance SURATEP-Company for the improvement of working conditions, productivity and control of work-related accidents.
Training and education Training and education, the spinal cord of the model. Includes a methodology that we call "Un Moment Sincero" which is a method for training in occupational health in the workplace, promoting participation and using workers experience.
Behavior modification The reinforcement of safe behaviour by positive feedback and establishment of agreements towards safety in the workplace.
Improvement of safety conditions in the workplace Improvement of safety conditions through a systematic surveillance and control of those risk factors that contribute to the occurrence of work-related accidents. This component uses the checklist methodology and introduces safety as one of the everyday activities.
Evaluation and follow-up To measure the outcome, the process of continuous improvement and the evolution of the intervention strategy in time.
Preliminary results Suratep implemented the model in those 48 companies with higher accident rates during 1996. The model was first implemented during the second quarter of 1997. Although there is not enough solid evidence of the effectiveness, the accident rate descended in Suratep from 8.1% in 1996 to 7.2% in 1997. We include all work-related accidents/incidents in our statistics, even those without days lost. Accidents without days lost are about 40% of all accidents reported.
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