The nature of the safety field today has changed dramatically. Most safety departments now have a smaller staff, working longer hours and taking on new responsibilities. Now, more than ever, we must increase efficiency just to keep up with demand. As a consulting firm, we often ask our clients, "What are your goals for your safety and risk programs?" Most answer that the priorities often change depending on the day, week, or month, but one thing always holds true, "We do not want our employees to get hurt, and we want them to go home to their families at the end of the day." With that as a core value, we need to focus our efforts on the activities that are going to get the greatest return on our investment and time.
Many benchmarking tools are available to safety professionals and used throughout the industry to compare to peers, but how reliable is this information? Are you really getting a good benchmark to judge the safety efforts of your team and organization? If you are using OSHA statistics as the sole basis for your benchmarking, without consideration for key risk and claims metrics, you may not be doing your organization any favors, because OSHA statistics only tell part of the story. You need to develop metrics and benchmarks that help you hone in on the areas that need the most attention and are driving your losses. You can't manage what you can't measure.
