Over the years, the public sector has worked to adopt many practices from the private sector. The goal to "reinvent government" provided opportunities to change practices from "red tape" to actual supportive tools. Many worked well, such as the efforts of the U.S. Mint in measuring production and loss based on actual income streams. However, most public sector elements do not have that ability. We just don't make a profit. But as spenders of the taxpayers' investment, we have a responsibility to protect and economize.
This paper provides a case history on one organization's efforts to develop a tool to meet its culture needs that was easy to understand and met the performance measure standards of specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely. The author encourages the reader to consider the tool only as a starting design that can be molded to fit the reader's organization's needs.
The agency provides financial services to military, civilian and vendors of the Department of Defense. Employing 14,000 people, the desire was to develop a lasting tool to measure success in safety. Since it was new to such a structured organization, one location became the "beta test" for development-Denver. The work group in Denver (1,200 employees) demonstrated their ability to make changes with a fifty-percent drop in incident rates between 1996 and 2002. In 2004, they were challenged with low rates, pending change and still trying to understand "safety" in a financial arena.
Traditionally, the private sector uses bottom-line, cost-containment measures, such as repair costs, medical costs, replacement of equipment, and training of temporary replacement employees to encourage improvement. In addition, insurance premium increases and experience modification rates can quickly gain management's attention. Work efficiency and product quality can even influence change when processes include safety elements. Of course, there are always the legal repercussions from regulators that can gain management's consideration.
The public sector, especially at the federal level, is challenged by the minimal impact of regulators such as OSHA. Other than bad press, there is little that can be done to an agency. Looking at the "bottom line," the costs impacting a federal agency are not as easily tracked. Losses directly impacting the budget are replacement of equipment, repair of property and temporary employment for employees on medical leave. Since a separate organization manages workers' compensation, costs are managed by a disinterested agency and a delayed chargeback. Though continuation of pay can be captured within 30 days of the incident, medical costs and lost time are delayed. The delay mitigates the "pain of loss" to management as the incident usually occurred six months prior (or more) to the actual collection. Finally, measurement of efficiency of work and quality of service can be nebulous if the organization has not developed definite performance measures.
