"Cooking the books"--behavior-based safety at the San Francisco Bay Bridge

Practitioners of Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) claim dramatic reductions in worker injuries and illnesses through modifying workers' "unsafe behaviors." This case study of a BBS program implemented by KFM, a giant construction consortium rebuilding the eastern span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge in California, documents how BBS was used to suppress reporting of worker injuries and illnesses on site. The key elements of KFM's BBS "injury prevention" strategy included: 1) cash incentives to workers and supervisors who do not report injuries; 2) reprisals and threats of reprisals against those employees who do report injuries; 3) selection and use of employer friendly occupational health clinics and workers compensation insurance administrators; 4) strict limits on the activities of contract industrial hygiene consultants; and 5) a secretive management committee that decides whether reported injuries and illnesses are legitimate and recordable. KFM reported injury and illness rates 55% to 72% lower than other bridge builders in the Bay Area, but the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) issued Willful citations to the consortium in June 2006 for failing to record 13 worker injuries on its "OSHA Log 300," as required by law.

Recruitment and Retention of Novice Faculty

As nursing faculty members younger than 35, we consider ourselves to be in the minority. Our concern about the future of nursing education has driven us to consider ways to recruit and retain new, young faculty. To stimulate discussion, 10 suggestions for schools of nursing in the recruitment and retention of new faculty are presented: provide guidance, foster socialization, encourage flexibility, conduct orientation, provide support, facilitate collaboration, allow for mistakes, coordinate teaching assignments, grow your own, and offer rewards. While this list is far from complete, we believe it is a starting point from which schools could develop individual strategies for recruitment and retention of faculty members in nursing academia. The nursing shortage continues to intensify the lack of nursing faculty members. As a result, strategies to recruit and retain young faculty members only gain importance. Generations are changing, and it is important that schools of nursing are aware that recruitment and retention strategies that may have been successful in the past, may now be obsolete.

Sales compensation governance: the last frontier of corporate reform

The area of sales compensation has remained relatively untouched by recent pressures for compensation reform. This article highlights some of the ways that sales organizations stumble in managing their compensation programs, and why it takes more than a simple tactical fix to address these problems effectively. The authors describe a more structured governance framework that not only identifies and resolves key sales compensation issues, but ultimately safeguards the effectiveness and financial integrity of the sales organization itself.