We have managed complex risks for major corporations and one thing has consistently helped us to substantially reduce loss costs – a positive, proactive, business culture.

Loss costs are directly influenced by an industry feeding on conflict between employers and their employees. This industry is made up of attorneys fueling conflict and broking loss dollars (on both sides of the issue), doctors more interested in providing forensic medical opinions than providing treatment, and a parade of transcribers, stenographers, claims adjusters, interpreters, investigators and others with a vested interest in the ongoing conflict between employers and employees. Active Agenda can help organizations create an environment of “Us (Employee and employer) vs. Them (system).”

Many of Active Agenda's modules will appear strange to traditional safety practitioners busy managing the “3 E's of Industrial Safety: Engineering, Education, and Enforcement.” Over fifty years of risk control experience, and reproducible results, have led us to incorporate “culture” into Active Agenda's design for managing and mitigating loss costs.

Open, Transparent, Collaborative, Design: Active Agenda uses single systems to manage operational risks across an enterprise. For example, many organizations conduct inspections and audits to ensure employee safety, product quality, environmental protection, positive labor relations, and protection of the corporate brand. Most organizations establish disparate systems, managed by different people, to achieve an effective inspection and audit process. Active Agenda uses a single inspection and audit system to address all of these risk imperatives. Active Agenda applies the same level of transparent systems and knowledge sharing across fifty other business practices. Utilization of Active Agenda, as designed, can improve communications, enhance success, and reduce conflict in an organization.

Communication Modules: Active Agenda incorporates many modules designed to improve communications and thereby positively impact a business culture. Several of Active Agenda's communication modules are:

Incentives: Providing incentives to employees for action oriented results can be a very good way to direct and drive change in an organization. Rewarding actions which further company interests can improve a business culture.

Suggestions: Most suggestion programs fail for lack of effective follow through. Active Agenda can ease the burden of managing an effective suggestion program and begin to “tap into” the organization's knowledge (or idea) base. Providing a system for sharing ideas can improve culture.

Postings: Capturing data is one thing, sharing it is another. Active Agenda's posting module helps companies to assign, track, and audit required postings. With a Active Agenda, postings can be based on real, validating (or not) feedback from the production floor, and that improves business culture.

Surveys: Active Agenda enables the generation of company surveys, whether this issue is “Do you want a Christmas party?” or “Are you happy with our industrial medical provider?” Actions taken based on organizational samples are good for business culture.

Feedback: We all know the power of feedback, but do we have formal systems to track feedback and the results it generates? Usually not. Active Agenda can help companies track feedback and results and that strengthens business culture.

Town Hall: Have you ever wanted to ask a question in front of everyone? It's amazing how answers change based on who's listening the the response. Active Agenda lets companies capture, track, and post questions asked of anyone, by anyone. This kind of transparent dialog can eliminate paralyzing paranoia and shift a business culture from that of “hide the ball” to “good for all” - even if the answers aren't popular.

Values Threats: We've all seen the company mission statement but do we manage by it? Usually not. Active Agenda's Values Threats module allows organizations to track the company's mission and values and actions which threaten them. Posting a mission statement and subsequently ignoring it can be one of the quickest ways to erode a positive culture.

Measuring Culture: Active Agenda allows organizations to measure the utilization of established programs and modify or eliminate those not producing value. At the very least, an organization deploying Active Agenda can illustrate the presence of systems and quantify organizational apathy as a defense.

Using the module examples above to illustrate the point:

• Which location receives the most positive or negative feedback?
• Which supervisor has the highest level of incentive program utilization?
• Which department, or individual, or supervisor, has generated the most company suggestions?
• Which employee “speaks up” and provides the most constructive feedback? How often?
• What percentage of the employees are unhappy with the industrial medical provider?
• Which organization most frequently reports values threats and risks the credibility of the company's mission?
• How balanced is participation in the company's risk control process? ...by supervisor?

Culture matters and Active Agenda takes this into account.