Employee Safety Reporting Program – 673.23(b)
Frontline employees are a significant source of safety data. These employees are typically the first to spot unsafe conditions that arise from unplanned conditions either on the vehicles, in the maintenance shop, or in the field during operations. For this reason, the Employee Safety Reporting Program (ESRP) is a major tenet of the PTASP Rule. Under this rule, agencies must establish and implement a process that allows employees to report safety conditions directly to senior management; provides protections for employees who report safety conditions to senior management; and includes a description of employee behaviors that may result in disciplinary action. The ESRP program will be introduced and implemented.
PBT uses Operator and Passenger Complaint Forms (Appendix A, Table 8 shows the document name, file name, and date of adoption), but does not have a formal ESRP. Over the next year, PBT will review and modify, if necessary, our existing complaint procedures to develop a full ESRP that ensures compliance with 49 CFR Part 673.
In general, the PBT's ESRP will ensure that all employees are encouraged to report safety conditions directly to senior management or their direct supervisor for elevation to senior management. The policy will include any contract employees. The policy will also spell out what protections are afforded to employees who report safety-related conditions and will describe employee behaviors that are not covered by those protections. The policy will also elaborate on how safety conditions that are reported will be reported back to the initiator(s) - either to the individual or groups of individuals or organization, dependent on the nature of the safety condition.
To bolster the information received from frontline employees, PBT will also review our current policy for how our agency receives information and safety-related data from employees and customers. If necessary, PBT will develop additional means for receiving, investigating, and reporting the results from investigations back to the initiator(s) - either to the person, groups of persons, or distributed agency-wide to ensure that future reporting is encouraged.
