Imagine driving a vehicle without a dashboard. No feedback whatsoever as to how well you and the vehicle are performing.
Sure, we can do it, but without feedback on our performance and the vehicle’s, I doubt we’d meet the state’s defined and quantified standards for “safe operation of a motor vehicle.”
Just consider speed as one of the critical safety indicators. How can one gauge their driving ability without being able to measure their speed?
In safety, we need a “dashboard”. The data presented by this dashboard must be validated; otherwise, we will ignore it, just as we would any feedback from untrustworthy sources.
Safety Metrics are a must if we wish to validate the effectiveness of our controls, barriers, and safeguards. But Safety is NOT solely about the number of activities happening. We must have a quality assurance tool to ensure that activities are being performed effectively and that we are achieving the desired risk reductions from those activities. Trust me, organizations can turn “leading indicators” into a numbers game just like many have done with the “lagging indicators”.
But not measuring the safety management system/safety process is just “crazy talk” as my old friend Tracy Clem (may he rest in peace) used to say to me daily when we worked together. It reminds me of one of my favorite movie scenes…
