Corporate dashboards will often bring
together a series of metrics that are intended to give a balanced view of how
the whole organisation or a division, directorate or department is
performing. It is often the case that
health and safety performance indicators will appear alongside those traditionally
used to drive financial performance of the business such as sales, production,
utilisation, costs and head count. The
increasing importance of Health and Safety, and hence the desire to improve
performance, has been driven in part by the clearly growing negative
consequences of failure to protect employees and the public, but also the
increasing desire for organisations to be seen as agents of good in the community.
There is, however, a danger that an
executive viewing an improving trend on his Health and Safety metrics may be
misled into thinking that this improving trend will continue. With other measures, like improving sales or
improving efficiency, it will often be the case that the reasons for
improvement can be expected to be maintained at least in the short to medium
term. Opening new markets, launching new
products or improving sales capability are positive factors that drive improved
sales and profit that once earned generally do not disappear overnight. Similarly, performance improvements
implemented to drive efficiency are likely to endure over the medium term at
least. With improving Health and Safety
metrics cannot be a point at which back are patted because the next workplace
injury, the next fatality or the next catastrophic disaster can come out of the
blue. Health and safety professionals have
long understood that there is a safety incident Pyramid. One study carried out by Conoco Philips Marine
in 2003 identified that for every fatal incident you would expect to see 30
lost time incidents and 300 near misses.
What the Pyramid cannot help with is determining when in 331 incidents
the fatality will occur. It could be the
first or the 331st. Constant
vigilance is required for sustained improvement in Health and Safety.
It is also the case that many organisations
do not have a firm grasp of the Health and Safety risks they are taking. Even companies with seemingly mature risk
assessment and safety management procedures can fall foul of risk taken for
operational expediency at a relatively low level in the organisation. For example, when a production plant’s fire
protection systems have a reported fault it is very easy for plant managers to take
the risk, continue production and just make sure someone gets out to fix the
fault as soon as possible. Or the shut-off
valve that is jammed open. As long as the plant keeps producing it’s not a
problem. Both these scenarios expose the organisation to significant risk, the
kind of risk that could lead to catastrophe. However, neither would show up in
LTI or a Loss of Containment reports.
They may not even show up on planned maintenance metrics: the fire
control system was fixed in two days and the valve isn’t meant to be looked at
for another 18 months “lets just sweep those under the carpet”. Which leads us to consider the completeness
and accuracy (to borrow the accounting phrase) of Health and Safety metrics.
Measurement of metrics in Health and Safety
do not typically have the same rigour that financial measures have associated
with them. There is unlikely to be the
level of external scrutiny that financial statements have applied to them. The auditing profession has well over a
century of collective experience in being able to assess financial
statements. In comparison, the effort
expended in verifying Health and Safety performance measures could be described
as cursory. Whether incidents or near
misses are reported will remain a function of how much importance each
organisation, from the top to the bottom, places on improving its health and
safety. At the end of the day, it will
come down to the organisation’s culture. Does the foreman view an injury to one
of his team as an opportunity to learn, for him and the whole organisation, or
something negative to try and avoid reporting if possible? “You can still drive the truck with your arm
bandaged, John” and “Sally twisted ankle won’t stop her coming in to answer the
phones”.
Cold health and safety metrics do not tell
the same story that a day, a week, a month visit by an experienced external
health and safety manager or process safety engineer would quickly
provide. This is why the follow up and
closure of external audit and assessment actions is one of the better ways of
measuring the cultural risk an organisation faces.
However, changing culture is not a simple
task. It has to start with leadership
commitment and then engage the whole workforce in:
·
Understanding what the organisation
is trying to achieve
·
Explaining the behaviours that are
required and encouraged
Building capability to deliver safety
performance improvement.
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