Safety
Performance Measurement
Going
Beyond Lost time Injuries
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure” – Drucker
"If we are in the business of promoting OHS, why do
we use failures as the measure of our success?" - Rose
Today, many industries and indeed regulatory agencies still
focus completely on common safety performance measures such as lost time injury
frequency rate and number of lost days in an effort to measure safety
performance. Unfortunately, such indicators just measure failure to control and
give no indication of risk management effort, which may take time to come to
fruition. Such outcome measures, when used to judge safety performance, are
known as lagging indicators.
Use of Lagging
Indicators - Lost time injury frequency rate, severity rate, lost days etc.
Advantages
·
Motivate management
·
An accepted standard
·
Long history of use
·
Used by government agencies, industry associations
·
Easy to calculate
·
Indicate trends in performance
·
Good for self comparison
Disadvantages
·
Reactive
·
Easily manipulated
·
May be biased (management attitude to restricted work,
Doctor influence/worker attitude to light duties/compensation system/safety
awards& competitions)
·
Figures measured are
typically low making it difficult to establish trends
- Incident occurs managers/safety specialists put it down to a
‘once off/freak’ event
Advantages & Disadvantages of
Lagging Indicators
Significantly however, what we are all
seeking is continuous improvement towards an incident free workplace, yet when
measuring lagging indicators – we are only monitoring our performance at the
last stage (how many fatalities, injuries, illnesses and what rate do we
experience these in our operation?)
Rather,
we need to examine the processes that lead to these failures and monitor how
effective our control
Examples
of the Application of Positive Performance Measures for Safety
|
Objective
|
Indicator
|
Measure/monitor
|
Results
|
Improve
|
All activities to be subject to
hazard analysis and risk assessment
|
Risk Assessment
|
% Risk assessment complete
% Control measures implemented
|
Track reported % on a monthly basis
by area/department
|
Review progress at monthly senior
management meetings, target areas for improvement
|
Written Work Procedures in place for
critical activities
|
Work procedures
|
% Written procedures complete
|
Track reported % on a monthly basis
by area/department
|
Review progress at monthly senior
management meetings, target areas for improvement
|
Provision of safe place of work
|
Work place inspection target for
each frontline supervisor across whole site on a monthly basis each with
specific area
Workplace visibility tour by middle
and senior managers in their work area once per month
|
% Scheduled inspections complete by
name and work area/dept.
% Actions arising complete by
name and work area/dept
% Visibility/Inspection Tours
complete
|
Track reported % on a monthly basis
by area/department
|
Review progress at monthly senior
management meetings, target areas for improvement
|
Employees working safely
|
Behavior based observations
|
% Employees working safely
% PPE compliance
|
Track reported % on a monthly basis
by area/department
|
Review progress at monthly senior
management meetings, target areas for improvement
|
Incident reporting and
implementation remedial measures
|
Timeliness of reporting
Incident investigation effectiveness
Log of corrective actions
|
% Incidents reported within 24 hours
% Near miss incidents
% Incident investigation complete on
time
% Corrective actions implemented
All by area/dept.
|
Track reported % on a monthly basis
by area/department
|
Review progress at monthly senior
management meetings, target areas for improvement
|
Safe and competent employees
|
Performance assessment including
training needs identification Training records
|
% Performance assessments complete
% Scheduled training complete
All by area/dept.
|
Track reported % on a monthly basis
by area/department
|
Review progress at monthly senior
management meetings, target areas for improvement
|
Improve safety awareness
|
Toolbox talks on targeted topics
monthly by all Supervisors
|
% Tool Box Talks complete by Dept.
% Employees attending
% Actions arising complete
All by Area/Dept.
% Safety Representatives Trained
|
Track reported % on a monthly basis
by area/department
|
Review progress at monthly senior
management meetings, target areas for improvement
|
Improve safety culture
|
Annual climate survey
|
Overall findings based on selected
criteria
All by Area/Dept.
|
Track trends on annual basis and by
area/dept
|
Review progress at annual senior
management meetings, target areas for improvement
|
Examples of PPM’s for Safety
Essentially PPMs are tracking the
drivers of effective safety and risk management. Organizations need to
recognize that there is no single reliable measure of health & safety
performance, what is required is a ‘basket of measures or a ‘balanced
scorecard’ providing information on a range of health & safety activities.
Measurement of PPM’s provides information on how the system operates in
practice, identifies area where remedial action is required, provides a basis
for continuous improvement and provides a mechanism for feedback and
consequential motivation.
Should you consider applying PPM’s for
safety in your workplace, it is vitally important that for any PPM chosen everyone understands exactly what’s being
measured and what significance the use of the measurement will have on
producing the desired result in your organisation. It should also be
administratively practicable, quantifiable & reproducible,
as objective
and error free as possible and readily relate
to aspect trying to control and/or goals set.
It is also important to distinguish
between two the types of process indicator: those, which focus on the behavior
of employees and those, which measure management activity. Examples of
indicators of employee behavior include; % of employees wearing PPE (safety
glasses, harness etc.), % hoses rolled-up, % pre-start checks complete. One of
the best features of such indicators is that merely publicizing the data within
the workplace focuses attention on the problem and is likely to lead to safety
improvements without the need for more direct or punitive management
intervention usually within weeks not months, they are positive and focus on
how good rather than how poor safety performance is involving all workers in
improving safety, creating a safety culture and achieve "ownership".
There is however a significant
drawback to such indicators. They are focused on and aimed at changing the
behavior of employees, not managers. Yet it is managers who are ultimately
responsible for health and safety and who are in the best position to lead by
example and take action where necessary. Hence the importance of indicators,
which measure the safety related activity of management. Examples here include;
% of workforce who has received specific safety training, % managers
participating in safety talks, % of safety audits, % risk assessments. Such
management indicators can usually be assigned once management has specified its
safety objectives and targets whereupon appropriate measures, which measure
actual performance, can be assigned.
When considering PPMs for safety,
define the key activities in your safety management systems that need to be
promoted, reinforced and visibly drive the culture. Select the activity measures
from these. For each of these PPMs you will need to list the measure to be
used, how it will be collected, calculated and reported including the frequency
of reporting. Some measures will need to be collected daily, others weekly or
monthly. Most will need to be reported monthly or quarterly to be of value in
monitoring performance (refer to examples in Table 2 for a typical site). Those
chosen will vary depending on the maturity of the site and management style of
the operation, significantly the measure need to be owned by the site
personnel.
Because PPMs can be more focused on
risk areas or specific targets/objectives they may not need to continue as a
constant or fixed PPM for years. If a particular area of concern or issue is
brought under control there may be other priority areas to focus on and new
PPMs can be adopted for these, so it is an ongoing improvement process using a
minimum number of PPMs relevant to an operation at the time. For example, it is
not of much value reporting 100% employees have received inductions, month
after month and in any case periodic audits will check systems such as this
remain effective in the long term.
