By Kate W. Pile
is executive director of the Pulp & Paper Safety Association.

Safety Management

Safety performance metrics: Part II of III

In the January issue, I gave you an overview of the standard measurements that have been used for many years to determine the effectiveness of a safety process. These three standards (Incident Rate, Severity Rate, and Incident Cost) are good measurements, but they are merely the foundation of safety metrics. If a company places too much emphasis on them, they run the risk of encouraging employees to under-report incidents. For example, an employee doesn't report a shoulder strain because his department is close to reaching a goal, or a team leader doesn't report damaged equipment hoping the next shift will take the downtime instead of her shift. In an effort to track and measure performance, we have occasionally created monsters we can't control.

The other problem with relying on the above measures is they will only tell you when your process has failed (or succeeded); they can't tell you where it went wrong or why.

The best way to fight these risks is to measure (and reward) something over which your employees have complete control. If supervisors and team leaders are required to hold one safety meeting each month, then include that in your metrics program. If employees are required to attend one safety meeting per month, participate in one training program per month, and make four safety observations per week, then include those items in your metrics program. Require the same level of completion (95%?) of these tasks as em-ployees are held to for quality or production tasks. Failure to comply must carry the same consequences as failure to comply with production requirements.

Redesigning safety metrics for your facility, you would first list all of your safety process requirements. For our example, I'll list some typical requirements for a plant supervisor.
   • Hold safety meetings for the department
   • Department inspection
   • Attend safety training/meeting held by location Safety Manager
   • Ergonomics task review/observation
   • Reduce injuries & occupational illnesses
   • Control severity
   • Control incident costs

Your company may require more or less than the above, but we'll go with these. To make it easier to assemble and track, we'll put these requirements in a grid, assign some goals, and assign a weight to each requirement. I would recommend placing the emphasis on incident prevention tasks that the supervisor can control and those designed to address specific safety issues, such as repetitive motion illness. Full compliance with all task goals would result in an overall score of 100%.

ENCOURAGING COMPLIANCE. To further encourage compliance, overall scores should be rolled up and scores posted for department managers, unit or plant managers, and even division vice presidents. If you work in a multiple location company, this is a good way to compare safety activities from one location to another. (Incident Cost goals can be adjusted for regional differences in medical costs.)

As previously stated, safety goals should be measurable, attainable, and reasonable. Accountability must be built into the system with goals tied into annual performance reviews. Be sure you understand how much time will be needed to manage a complex measurement system before you put it into place. Safety professionals without clerical support may need to find additional resources if the measurement system is complex or if there are a large number of supervisors in the facility. Alternatives include the use of safety committee members to assist with the collection and tabulation of measurement data. n