Pages in this chapter (3 of 3)
The safety pyramid
The safety pyramid shows how the numbers of near misses, incidents with property damage, minor injuries and serious injuries relate. For every serious incident there are many more minor ones and still more near misses. Studies such as one by Bird suggested ratios of about 600 near misses and 30 property damage incidents to 10 minor injuries and 1 serious injury. Treat the exact ratio as an illustration. The lesson is that a count of near misses lets you spot and act on problems before they produce a serious injury.
The iceberg principle
Incidents cost businesses a great deal all over the world. Organisations with strong safety and health management have fewer injuries and illnesses, and lower costs. The visible costs, such as incident investigation, compensation and medical expenses, are only the top of the iceberg. Below the water are the replacement of machinery and people, lost production, and other costs that are not insured. The cost of an error is far more than the cost of putting a system in place from the start.
If you do not measure properly, the effectiveness of your management system is weakened. Managers will have no reliable information on how well risks are controlled, and cannot decide well. In business, performance usually means profit, return on investment or market share. In safety many people think it means only incident data, but measuring both inputs and outputs gives you confidence that you are doing enough and shows how to do better.
7.3 What Is Auditing?
An audit looks for objective evidence, as objective as possible, on whether the way you manage health and safety meets the organisation's policy and aims.
There are two levels:
- Internal audit is done by people in the organisation. It helps managers by measuring how effective the management of safety is.
- External audit is done by a third party and gives an independent view. It often represents the interests of other stakeholders as well as management.
An audit uses three kinds of evidence:
| Evidence | What it checks |
|---|---|
| Documents | Whether the written system covers the hazards of the organisation. |
| Interviews | Whether awareness, know how and resources are suitable. |
| Observation | Whether what the documents describe is really present in the workplace. |
Audit findings are of little use unless someone acts on them. You may help senior management to write an action plan.
Many people want to see performance information, in different forms and for different purposes:
- Inside the organisation: senior managers, line managers, employees, safety and employee representatives, and shareholders.
- Outside the organisation: enforcement agencies, insurers, clients, the public and shareholders.
You can also involve your workforce by asking for suggestions that may improve the working environment.
7.4 Getting It Right
- Performance measurement is the key to knowing how individuals, groups and organisations are doing.
- Proactive measures look at the inputs to health and safety. They are powerful because they warn of problems before they happen, but they must relate to the outputs and to the objectives of the organisation.
- Reactive measures look at the outputs of health and safety, which are often negative. They are easy to collect but have limits.
- An audit checks whether your overall approach to health and safety is giving you the results you want.
Summary
- Measuring performance means using indicators to see how you are doing, what has happened and what may go wrong.
- You can measure health and safety performance proactively, by looking at inputs such as inspections and training, and reactively, by looking at outcomes such as injuries and ill health.
- Auditing checks, with documents, interviews and observation, whether the way you manage safety meets your policy and aims.
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