Motivating staff to own up to mistakes

Ever wondered how to motivate staff to report mistakes such as medication errors or minor injuries at work?  I've spent time in many workplaces over the years, in agriculture, volunteering, healthcare, and education.  Each workplace has had its differences, and issues, but in every one of them I saw people hiding their errors.  Mostly this was because when they had 'owned up' in the past, they were punished for it.  It has happened to me plenty of times in my working life, and often I didn't report errors if I thought no-one would otherwise know about them.  The problem with this outcome is that the organisation ends up with a low rate of incident reports which might sound like a good thing, but it's not.  An incident-report rate below expected norms for the relevant industry might mean the company is brilliant at safety and quality, or far more likely it means that the company lacks a safety and quality culture that values incidents as learning opportunities.
How then can a workplace motivate staff to report errors?

1. Adopt a no-blame approach to incidents.  This is critically important, and has to come from the very top of the organisation.  Staff may well be nervous when implementing a no-blame approach and find it hard to trust that it is real.  Leaders and managers must realise that one badly handled incident will set the process back by months or years.  Don't blame your staff for errors, and don't knowingly allow any outsiders to blame them either.
2. Give credit.  Acknowledge the courage of staff who report incidents especially ones which would otherwise be unknown.
3. Highlight the positive gains that arise from incident reporting as they relate to workplace goals.  Safety and quality is the key, not paperwork.  Celebrating the introduction of a new checklist is not a positive gain in workers eyes if it does not relate to observable benefits in safety or quality.  That's not to say that such things are un-needed.  Just don't highlight them as key achievements.
4. Apply consequences to line managers and senior managers who breach the no-blame approach, and do so transparently.  If workers don't trust management, the problem won't get fixed 'behind closed doors'.
5. Make incident reports a Key Performance Indicator for the organisation in the domains of worker engagement and safety and quality.  If the rate of incident reports is well below industry norms, critically appraise how they are managed and whether or why there is significant under-reporting.
6. Educate all staff from the most senior manager to the student on work experience about the crucial role of incident reporting in securing improvements in safety and quality.
7. Include incident reporting history in performance appraisals and staff development agreements, by linking a strong track record of incident reporting to a commitment to a culture of safety and quality.

None of this is easy, but it is all readily achievable if the organisation takes it seriously.

Getting value for money in remote areas

Some time ago, I wrote about using Bush Orders to do grocery shopping.  This is how we avoid being ripped off by price-gouging remote area stores, as we pay normal supermarket prices for our groceries in a regional centre, then pay freight to get it to our home.  This compares very favourably with prices in our local supermarket, and vastly improves the range and quality of goods we can access.

In general, I support the concept "buy local".  I'm even prepared to pay a premium to support a local store.  However, I am not prepared to support businesses who use a captive market to price-gouge, and often provide abysmal customer service as well.  It seems I am not alone in this.  A recent survey reported in CHOICE magazine found that NT has the highest per capita use of online shopping in Australia, and that's despite a significant portion of the NT population having little or no access to online services.  No longer can NT businesses sit back and treat their customers with contempt while charging them a large premium for goods.  We will simply order them online, and when this proves to be a positive experience, as it almost always does, we are unlikely ever to go back to the local business.

In my case, I can choose whether to buy a part for my 4WD locally and pay 2 1/2 times more for it, or order it online and wait a week for it to arrive.  In rare cases, I'll pay the extra because I can't wait, but mostly (about 98% of the time) I will take the online option.  If the local business kept their mark-up to even 50% compared to city prices, I would but it from them every time.  But a 150% mark-up is stupid!  Especially when their customer service is surly, unhelpful and often downright hostile.  Even for basic food items that I can't do without, I will wait a week to get them via freight from Alice Springs than buy them locally, mainly because the local supermarket charges between 200-400% more for many items.  Sure some items are as cheap as elesewhere, but they tend to be the junk food lines rather than the healthy foods.  Fruit and vegetables here are expensive and highly variable in quality, sometimes barely edible.  Yet the same items bought via Bush Orders from Woolworths in Alice Springs are fresh, excellent quality, and usually less than half the price even allowing for freight.

It's not all doom and gloom though.  I recently bought a tyre for the Transit van.  After days of searching online, I found 3 tyres that would do the job.  All were around $240, with between $30 and $100 freight to get the tyre to Tennant Creek.  I then went to the local tyre outlet to check what they had.  The pleasant helpful person on the front desk checked the computer and found the size I needed in a well-known brand for $250 including fitting and balancing, and it was in stock!  So here's one business that managed to get it right:

• Good customer service
• Competitive price
• Quality goods

So guess where my first stop for all my future tyre needs in Tennant Creek will be?  Yep, the local tyre outlet.  They could have charged another $100 for the tyre, and probably got away with it once, but this would have meant that all future tyres would be bought either online or while on a trip elsewhere.  By giving me value for money, they have ensured that I will support this particular local business.  And that's probably worth more to them in the long run than a quick $100 once-off.