Simpsons characters target workmen’s comp

SAN FRANCISCO - With owners and operators keeping a close eye on expenses during the current industry downturn, every aspect of operations is subject to scrutiny, including insurance. Yet experienced owners and operators know that the cost of some types of insurance coverage is built in because the protection it provides is essential.

One cost that can be managed, however, is workmen’s compensation claims. The fewer the number and severity of accidents that employees have, the fewer the number of claims that will be filed. And of the claims filed, payouts can be smaller, leading, in turn, to lower premiums for workmen’s comp coverage.

Accordingly, at most every hotel, employee training—for entry-level employees and even those with more experience—typically includes briefings on safety procedures. But as with other aspects of training, memory can be short-lived. How to keep safety messages top of mind is a challenge hotel managers frequently face.

Ask Jesse Bowman, director of loss prevention at the Marriott San Francisco Downtown Hotel, about one of the programs he tried and he’ll recommend a series of safety posters and other materials based on a popular television cartoon series aimed at adults. The series is the long-running The Simpsons, which follows the comic exploits of the Simpson family, including Homer, a classic Everyman figure as well as his friends and neighbors.

“You can train associates on how to avoid accidents and injuries, but once the training is over people tend to forget some of the lessons they learned. Using the Simpsons materials was a good way of keeping these important safety messages in front of people. It reinforces the messages on a daily basis,” Bowman explained.

Employee safety—and keeping workmen’s compensation claims to a minimum—is an issue at hotels of any size, but it’s even more of a concern at a large convention hotel like the Marriott, given the scale and complexity of the operation with its 1,362 rooms, 137 suites, 117,000 square feet of meeting and banquet space, 42,0000-square-foot Yerba Buena Ballroom, which can seat 5,500 people. The hotel also employs about 1,200 associates.

The hotel’s accident reduction-focused posters, tabletop tent cards and other materials cover a range of safety situations, Bowman noted. “Everything from safe lifting to what we call ‘lock out, tag out,’ a procedure intended to ensure that a piece of machinery that has broken down is properly locked out and closed so no one can use it until it’s been repaired,” he said. The hotel’s safety program is created and marketed by SafetyWorld, a company based in Mississauga, Ontario, that specializes in safety awareness training products.

Like large convention hotels today, generally the workforce at the Marriott San Francisco is quite multi-cultural and multi-lingual. Through the exposure that Homer, Bart, and the other Simpson characters have had on television and in a recent feature-length movie, they’re very well known. The brand of humor is slightly subversive, though essentially mainstream. Consequently, they communicate well to everybody, including employees for whom English may not be their first language. “They communicate visually, so it’s easy to get the message,” Bowman continued.

To ensure the posters got the widest exposure possible, Bowman and his team hung them in strategic locations, including service elevators, in the back-of-the-house on guest floors as well as in individual hotel department offices and at the associates’ entrance to the hotel. “Associates see the posters everywhere. It was a real saturation approach,” he said.

Workmen’s compensation claims are always an issue in a hotel the size of the Marriott, noted Bowman, who said he believed in a hands-on approach. “It’s all in how you manage the situation,” he said. “We believe in getting associates back to work as quickly as we can given the specifics of the injury. We work with a panel of doctors who know our philosophy is to treat associates fairly. We work with the doctors and our insurance carriers daily.”

Bowman and his team also have medical expertise right on the property. “We have a health services professional who helps us out with any injuries that occur at the hotel and any claims that may result. So we’re able to react in a time-effective way for everyone’s benefit,” he said.

Essential to this hands-on approach is effective employee training and education, a component of which was the Simpsons program. “We actually put a dent in our number of accidents year-over-year,” Bowman said, “and part of that success, no doubt, is due to the program.”

Source: Hotel Business Magazine, 9/7/2009
Simpsons characters target workmen's comp