Measuring Safety
We often get so busy preparing safety policy and procedures, running training sessions and following up incidents or worker concerns that we may lose sight of how we measure and report safety performance to our various stakeholders.
Traditionally workplace safety was measured primarily by number of lost-time injuries (eg LTI rate) and workers compensation costs.
Clearly, we cannot ignore workers compensation and associated injury and return to work costs, but what else should we consider?
No Current Standard
Part of the problem is there is no common standard in Australia for measuring and reporting safety performance. The old Australian Standard AS 1885.1: 1990 entitled Workplace Injury and Disease Recording expired decades ago and has not been replaced. Indeed, the 1990 Australian Standard was only an update on the earlier 1976 code of practice.
Measuring Safety Losses
Lag or loss indicators for safety include all the physical criteria of prime interest to the organisation along with associated targets. Usually, the targets would be set merely to reduce losses over time eg 10% reduction per year or similar.
Typical loss or lag indicators for safety include:
Lost-time Injuries eg LTI Rate.
Medical Treatment Injuries eg MTI Rate.
Total Recordable Rate eg any medical, lost-time or inability to perform normal duties.
Workers Compensation eg cost per employee per year.
Whilst there is nothing wrong with seeking to reduce losses and setting reduction targets, the targets often risk being challenged as arbitrary or unrealistic and therefore unachievable.
Measuring Positive Performance
Increasingly, pro-active organisations are starting to measure what we typically refer to as positive performance measures, or “lead indicators” for safety.
Why should we focus on positive safety performance? Firstly, focusing on positive safety performance improves motivation and helps to identify weaknesses in our safety systems and practices, before physical losses even occur.
Typical lead indicators for safety include:
Inspections completed on time eg % to schedule.
Agreed activities implemented to schedule eg % to schedule.
Number of safe working days
In addition, the Safety Action benchmarking survey 2022* identified a number of additional measures which could provide a better measure of positive safety performance.
* Benchmarking Safety Performance 2022 by Safety Action Pty Ltd.
Our survey* identified the following measures as stronger indicators of positive performance:
Having a current 5-year strategy or vision.
Having an up-to-date key risks register.
Personnel trained to conduct risk assessments.
Feedback to employees on annual safety survey.
Legal compliance register.
Internal annual audit.
Independent 3-yearly reviews.
We recently grouped the key positive performance indicators into a one-page table with the categories:
Culture,
Awareness and training,
Activity, and
Systems
Loss Measures vs Lead Indicators
So, should we use lead or lag safety performance indicators?
We believe we need both the lead indicators as well as the traditional lag or loss indicators. However, we suggest you place the positive performance indicators first so we can gradually reduce the traditional emphasis solely on lag indicators.
Interested in a 1-page template for Board Safety Reporting or our table of positive performance indicators?
Call us on 03 8544 4300 or email.
