WOW, my article earlier this week on the flaws of the TRIR formula stirred a passionate debate among several SAFTENG members/clients/friends. But from that debate, they now can see what their future safety metrics could look like. I always get the following response (and it is a very legitimate response)…
If measuring the TRIR and DART are so flawed, what should we measure in their place?
When we get this question, we MUST be prepared with our response, as this door will not stay cracked open very long! So, we need to facilitate this journey into leading indicators by helping those asking the questions to see the answer(s) on their own accord. We do this simply by asking several questions to which we already know the answers – but they may not. Here is how I learned to do this process, and it has never failed me when the leaders of the business are ready to move forward with how TRUE safety performance is actually measured.
Remember, our basis for this improvement can be summarized nicely in Dr. Todd Conklin’s statement:
“Safety is not the absence of events; safety is the presence of defenses.”
In other words, measure those Defenses/Safeguards/Barriers that we have in place intending to PREVENT these events rather than simply measuring the number of events or calculating some event ratio!
Step #1 – Using our injury/illness logs for the past five years, as well as our First-Aid and Nearmiss reports, we ask the team what the top 5 injury types are and what body part they impacted. We let them see WHY there is value in logging all injuries and illnesses, WHY the accuracy matters, and WHAT we do with this lagging data. The bottom line is that there is a lot of good that can come from our lagging data. It can paint a very vivid picture of where we need to improve.
Step #2 – Once we have identified our Top 5 injury types and body parts impacted, we ask the team to name the safety efforts designed and implemented to address these injury trends from the past five years of injury/near-miss data. This may be difficult for some facilities, as management may have never connected the dots between real injury trends and specific safety measures put in place to attempt to reduce these injuries. For many facilities, safety is just doing the same old thing repeatedly and hoping for a better result. However, those facilities that are a bit more mature in their safety management system practices will be able to identify these special safety efforts outside their traditional safety/compliance program. And here lies our opportunity to take that leap of faith into leading indicators!
Step #3 – Taking each of these special efforts, ask the team to identify 2-3 key parts of each effort. For example, how often should these activities be taking place? Let’s say management is concerned about the lack of PPE usage in prescribed tasks, and management wants to address this. Granted, PPE is the end of the rope in our safeguards/controls of hazards, but this is what the team identifies as a concern. So they want to venture into some behaviors; while we recognize that PPE is not the answer to this problem, we need to let the team embrace this exercise, so we help them to devise a “PPE Observation card” for this need and train some personnel (Supervisors, Managers, Safety Committee Team members, etc) how to perform an “observation” and how to “provide feedback” to those being observed. EMBRACE this approach, even though we know PPE is the last line of defense, this could be a nice step into Behavioral Observations as well as Leading Indicators. But beware, do NOT let this become a “employees are the problem” exercise. There are dozens of reasons why PPE usage does not meet management expectations, and ONLY one will is “employee violation.”
The $60,000 question is… How often should these observations be done to be effective?
This is your FIRST LEADING INDICATOR! Establish a frequency of these PPE Observations. Establish measurable GOALS for these observations. These goals need to be WEEKLY GOALS to ensure these activities are being done at least weekly. If we set the goal based on monthly frequency, we will end up with all the observations done in the last few days of the month! Trust me on this. This is a simple metric that is easily communicated and measured.
The next metric we can implement would not be widely communicated, but it is key in this process. This metric is the “results” of the observations. Call it a “grade” or “score” of each observation. We let management establish this expectation based on their “risk tolerance.” But it will look something like “80%.” We want at least eight of the ten observation card items to be met in each observation. This metric will NOT be communicated to avoid bias in the observation results, but it will be a key indicator.
So now we have two (2) leading indicators based on actual safety activities around an injury trend we identified from our lagging injury/illness trends. Putting our attention and resources into these activities is how we drive down our risks. We repeat this exercise for each of our Top Five injuries, and before you know it, we have 5-10 new safety metrics around the activities that address our RECOGNIZED injury trends. This is, of course, on top of all our traditional safety/compliance activities. Please recognize this process can be used on all unwanted events that are measured by a number.
As we mature into this new metric system, we will eventually “incentivize” and/or “reward” personnel based on meeting these new metrics rather than the lagging indicators. Now, we have matured in our safety thinking and are well on our way to measuring the SMS elements as a means of “leading indicators.”
