“If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” – Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin).
Sure, you can think you’re improving something, but unless you know what the problem was in the first place you can’t truly fix it, and if you don’t truly fix it your improvement is nothing more than band-aid surgery. For example, a baseball player is in a deep slump and can’t hit a lick. Suddenly he’s goes four for five in a game and thinks he solved his problem. But what caused the problem? Without analyzing and benchmarking what he’s been doing all along, i.e. the angle of his bat, how high he holds his hands, the all-important “launch angle,” he will not have a true measure of if he is on the right track or just “having a good day.”
This is not uncommon in the business world. Let’s take for example your experience modifier, which is one of the biggest drivers of an employer’s workers’ compensation premium. The lower your experience modifier is the lower your premium will be.
Your experience modifier is based on your data, total claim dollars and audited payroll amounts over a three-year period. Unfortunately, most insurance agents will come to you and say: “You have a 0.94 experience modifier. That is great! You are getting a credit of 6% for a great loss history.” In other words, your company is making money. Therefore, you must be stressing to your employees to be job safety conscious. But that’s not automatically the case.
Many times a business owner believes because they are making money they have a good culture, so all is good. However, when they conduct an analysis, and do a deep dive into the all-important data points, they can see that there are issues within the company that is holding them back from real growth, productivity, accountability and profitability. From making real money.
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