October 5th, 2022 by Dakota Software Staff
While robust data may provide EHS leaders with greater insight into their operations, it can also feel overwhelming to sift through so much information. They need a way to see through the chaos and identify the information that genuinely moves their business forward and helps them achieve their goals. Thankfully, simplifying the process is possible if they begin tracking five essential Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that gauge safety performance.
Safety KPIs measure an organization's progress toward its health and safety program goals. They measure how effective your programs, policies, and procedures are at reducing or eliminating accidents and injuries in the workplace. They can help leadership understand their top risks and make intelligent, data-driven decisions that steer the organization clear of hazards.
There are two different groups of KPIs: leading and lagging.
Lagging indicators focus on past safety performance and things that have already happened, like accident and injury rates. Many of the most well-known lagging indicators, like Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR), no longer hold the same weight as a measure of safety performance that they once did. While still important to track for OSHA compliance, we now understand that too many factors are at play for one number to encapsulate a company's entire EHS performance.
Leading indicators, on the other hand, give companies clues as to where future accidents may occur so that they can address them proactively. They inform EHS leaders about the risks confronting their employees now versus in the past. Leading and lagging indicators both offer value, but leading indicators are what companies with industry-leading safety performance are most focused on because they represent a proactive approach toward safety.
Let's look at 5 of the most important leading indicators that can significantly impact a company's safety performance.
Inspections and audits give you a clearer picture of your current safety concerns and their findings can tell you where to focus your attention. For example, if audit data shows consistent non-compliance issues with PPE standards during a certain shift or within a certain department, it can help you focus attention on the likely causes. Audit tracking illuminates the issue because, without it, you may mistake a trend as a one-time occurrence.
Tracking audit and inspection findings related to regulatory topics, like fall protection or machine guarding, can show you where you are performing well and what areas are trending towards a negative outcome.
Identifying hazards is only part of the battle; you must also put appropriate controls in place to address them. That's why tracking corrective actions is so important. This metric can show which hazards have been resolved, what still needs to be done, and who is responsible.
Hazards that are not corrected are accidents waiting to happen. Tracking their status gives you valuable insight into risk areas and which areas of the organization are not fulfilling their responsibilities. You should track the number of action items created per month and how long they take to close by department and regulatory area.
Training is one of the most valuable things any company can do towards accident prevention. After all, we can't protect ourselves from threats we can't see or haven't been trained on. Tracking training hours will help you identify gaps in your workforce and the likelihood of an accident in a specific area.
For example, if you discover that a large number of your crew is behind on their fall protection training, that's a red flag and shows where to focus your attention. Also, Learning Management Systems (LMS), combined with high-quality training content, will ensure that employees actually retain the information rather than just rushing through the process. This will help you track the frequency and type of training, the competency rate for each role, and the pass-fail rates of learners.
Creating a safe workplace is truly a team effort. While some may hold the outdated assumption that safety is the sole responsibility of the safety professional, companies with high-performing safety records know otherwise. The more eyes you have looking for hazards, the safer your workplace will become.
Whether or not you have a formal Behavior-based safety (BBS) program, you should provide frontline workers with a process and mechanism for reporting safety issues and concerns, anonymously or otherwise, and provide them with feedback letting them know that concerns are being addressed. Tracking and analyzing these observations can provide a wealth of data that can be analyzed and acted on.
Having a way to measure worker participation is essential. In addition to observations, tracking Toolbox Talk attendance, inspection rates, and action item completion per employee can show you who is engaged and who isn't.
A near miss is an accident without an injury or loss, like a tool falling from a roof and nearly striking a worker below. Tracking near misses is critically important because an increase in the number of near misses often means a severe accident is around the corner.
When you begin to track near misses and investigate them like an accident or injury, you can gain all the experience without enduring the adverse effects. Tracking of the details surrounding near misses also provides context of the event and, when shared with other safety leaders, can provide a knowledge base that can inform and educate teams in the future. This qualitative data, combined with analysis from quantitative data, can help to establish a well-rounded safety program.
Now that we know the most important KPIs to track, how do we manage and gain valuable insight from that mountain of data we've collected? If you’re using paper-based systems combined with Excel and your Outlook calendar, you’re likely missing opportunities to learn from that data. Commercial software platforms provide all of the tools you need to accelerate your EHS programs.
Not only does an integrated EHS software platform allow you to streamline and normalize data, it helps you analyze that data across your entire organization and provides easy-to-read, actionable insights that help EHS leaders make timely, well-informed decisions. Software can provide your teams with a clear picture of a company's current safety and compliance status and helps to identify the areas that need the most attention. It also centralizes that data so all of your business leaders, regardless of location, can learn from, document, and share information on their safety and compliance challenges and successes.
With the help of EHS software, like Dakota Software’s ProActivity Suite, you can shift your compliance and safety programs from reactive to proactive. Check out our demo library for more information on how our solutions can help you make the most of your EHS data and propel your organization into a sustainable future.
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