Safety and health professionals are constantly challenged by management to justify their safety and health programs, staffing and initiatives. Likewise, management is constantly requested to provide support, resources, and make decisions that help companies focus on the prevention of injuries and illnesses, e.g., driving down injury and illness (I&I) rates. Are there data that can be translated into meaningful prospective metrics that management can understand that has proven to be an effective selling strategy? What prospective data is simple and readily available enough that most safety and health professionals can collect, analyze and present? Are we asking management the right questions, and hoping to justify our requests, based on metric-type presentations they have come to know form other business efforts (e.g., quality, production)?
One of the major challenges in developing the data or metric approach is determining the meaningful prospective data that management can understand, while being simple enough that most safety and health professionals can collect and analyze the data. Most safety professionals have been using injury and illness (I&I) data for quite a while, trying to explain a correlation between what this data indicates, and what the company needs to do to lower these rates. Some have been successful, others, not. Does I&I data really predict what programs need to be improved? Does I&I data predict if a program is being successful? Likewise, many safety professionals relate frustrations when asking Sr. Management to hold line management accountable for safety. Having met with and interviewed many plant managers, they express similar frustrations that safety only measures injuries and illnesses, but few prospective metrics that measure performance like the rest of their business. Have we really given Sr. Management metrics that measure the actual contributions of line management, or do we just measure and report on an indicator such as I&I rates?
Finally, safety and health goals and objectives (aka: action plans, implementation strategies, initiatives, corrective action plans) are often presented to management based on subjective regulatory interpretations. Retrospective safety data is sometimes used to justify positions and recommendations; however, it is typically restricted to injury and illness historical data. Often discussions are presented in terms of program improvement needs, or initiatives to be implemented by the safety department. Are there more effective methods of demonstrating the need for improvement strategies on the part of each line manager?
So, how are these problem(s) solved? An annual presentation outline was developed by a number of Fortune 500 companies, where data and metrics are presented as an Annual Report. This data analyzes prospective and retrospective safety and health data that supports and drives corrective action plans (initiatives). By using prospective data and measuring program performance, complimented by retrospective I&I data that provides validation as an indicator of program performance, management is more convinced that the safety and health manager was truly aware of program issues, and had done their homework in designing cost-effective solutions, and prioritized an approach toward the goal and objective setting process.
