This is a MUST WATCH video and yes it is long, but it is a video every safety professional and even management personnel needs to watch. For those still living in the world of Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) and you think that is just fine – WAKE THE HELL UP PEOPLE! As they explain in this video, TRIR is for government agencies to monitor entire industry sectors. It was NEVER intended to measure a single business, division, facility, unit/department within a facility, etc. And these Ph.D. statisticians PROVE it in their research and they do an excellent job keeping it simple. What is the common theme in their presentation as an ALTERNATIVE to using TRIR… LEADING INDICATORS!! STOP driving/causing people to look at a number they have ZERO control over and instead have them FOCUS ON THE SAFETY PROCESS that produces that # (TRIR). They have FULL control over the safety process metrics and if WE (the safety professionals) DESIGN, MEASURE, ANALYZE, IMPROVE and CONTROL (DMAIC Model) our safety process, which is correctly based on RISKS, that is PREDICTIVE RISKS, then the process will produce the results management wants. Lastly, they touched on my 10-year safety crusade… QUALITY over quantity. Somehow over the past 10 years, many have turned “leading indictors” into a numbers game/pencil-whipping exercise in order to achieve some number of activities, much like they played with the OSHA rates 20 years ago. Anyway, I could rattle on for days on this topic. I leave you with this last thought before we watch the video… it is the year 2022, our profession has been using TRIR for over 50 years – name one other facet of our profession that we still rely on as a major change agent in safety performance from 50 years ago?
Here is the video:
