I'll never forget the day the state workers' compensation representatives walked into our office.

At the time, I had only been with the restaurant franchise for about five months.

When I was first hired into Human Resources, my boss joked that corporate said he needed an HR person, but he wasn't entirely sure what he wanted that person to do.

I told him not to worry.

I'd find something valuable.

It didn't take long.

As I started digging into the operation, one problem immediately jumped out at me.

We were having far too many employee injuries.

• Cuts.
• Burns.
• Slip-and-falls.
• Shoulder injuries.

The accidents weren't happening because managers didn't care.

They weren't happening because employees wanted to get hurt.

The problem was that safety was treated as a one-time conversation.

Employees learned safety when they learned a station.

Then everyone moved on.

• There was no ongoing reinforcement.
• No consistent reminders.
• No system.

So I started building one.

• I created monthly safety topics.
• I wrote training materials.
• I developed tracking systems.

I began creating what would eventually become the foundation for today's REST Compliance Protection System™.

The program wasn't fully implemented yet.

In fact, we had barely gotten started.

Then the state workers' compensation agency arrived.

And the conversation wasn't pleasant.

They reviewed our claims history and informed ownership that our workers' compensation costs had become a serious concern. They were going to drop our coverage.

The message was simple, yet servere:

• Something had to change...
• Fast.

I wasn't in the room for the first part of the discussion.

But I later learned that ownership pushed back.

"Wait."

"Before you make a final decision, you need to see what we're working on."

They told the state representatives about the new safety initiative that was being built by their "new HR gal."

Then they brought me in.

I showed them everything.

• The training structure.
• The monthly safety topics.
• The documentation process.
• The tracking systems.
• The plan for ongoing reinforcement.

After reviewing the program, they agreed to give us another chance.

Looking back, that meeting changed everything.

• Because suddenly safety wasn't just a good idea.
• It wasn't just an HR project.
• It became a business necessity.

And now we had an opportunity to prove that a different approach could work.

What Happened Next

What happened after that meeting surprised almost everyone.

The safety program continued rolling out.

Managers began reinforcing safety consistently.

Employees received ongoing training instead of one-time reminders.

• Documentation improved.
• Awareness improved.
• And most importantly...
• Injuries began going down.

In workers' compensation, every industry has a benchmark. An experience modification factor (often called an EMR or modifier) of 1.0 generally means you're performing about where similar businesses in your industry are expected to perform.

When I first began digging into the company's safety performance, we were well above that benchmark.

Our injuries were costing the company far more than they should have.

But after implementing the safety system, things began to change.

• The first year, our modifier dropped below where it had been.
• The following year, it dropped again.
• Then it dropped again.

By the fourth year, our workers' compensation modifier had fallen to 0.6.

Not only had injuries decreased, but the company earned a 40% claim-free discount that year.

The savings from that discount alone totaled approximately $189,000.

And that doesn't include the thousands of dollars saved during the years leading up to it as claims decreased and our modifier continued improving.

The real victory wasn't the money.

The real victory was that fewer employees were getting hurt.

• Fewer burns.
• Fewer cuts.
• Fewer slip-and-falls.
• Fewer lives disrupted by preventable injuries.

The money simply proved what we already knew:

• Safety wasn't a cost.
• It was an investment.
• And it was working.

Next week, I'll share the second lesson we learned:

Why most restaurant safety programs fail—even when managers genuinely care about safety.

An Unexpected Return Visit

A few years later, something happened that I never expected.

The same state workers' compensation representatives who had once questioned whether we could turn things around wanted to know what we were doing differently.

They had noticed the results.

• Our modifier had continued dropping.
• Claims were decreasing.
• The numbers were moving in a direction they rarely saw.

They wanted to see the program.

This time, instead of asking why our claims were so high, they were asking how we had improved them so dramatically. They said they had never seen numbers that good.

I walked them through the system.

• The monthly safety topics.
• The reinforcement process.
• The tracking.
• The quizzes.
• The documentation.
• The manager involvement.
• The accountability.

What they discovered was something I've believed ever since:

• Training alone doesn't create results.
• Videos alone don't create results.

What creates results is a system.

• Employees need reinforcement.
• Managers need visibility.
• Training needs accountability.
• Completion needs documentation.

And leadership needs a simple way to know what is happening without creating hours of extra work.

That's what I had built.

And that's why the results continued improving year after year.