How does your organization monitor its safety processes and programs?
Introducing “HSEQ Career Column” -” How do you monitor Safety Processes and Programs ” with Olawale Ogunyebi.
The HSEQ Career Column is a weekly article series written by Olawale Ogunyebi, a DuPont Master Coach, Besafe Super Trainer, and a former Africa Regional Safety Operations Manager (Unilever). He is presently the Managing Partner at MTC ENT. Dev. Limited. The purpose of this series is to mentor entry-level and struggling HSEQ professionals, narrating and drawing out lessons from the writer’s real-life experiences in the safety industry. Catch up with the posts you’ve missed HERE.
Sometimes in 2012, we engaged a Safety Resources company to conduct a Safety Benchmarking Assessment of our site. We wanted to know the impact of our established safety processes and programs on the overall safety climate of the organization.
Before this time, the business had done much in improving safety in designs, facilities, and procedures.
At the end of the exercise, we scored 3.9 which put our organization at the very end of an independent safety culture. Whilst, the best grade in class organizations will be on 4+, indicating an interdependent safety culture.
How is your organization monitoring the efficacy of her safety processes and programs?
Many CEOs and Senior Managers see HSE as a cost center because no one has shown them what is being spent. Also, no one shows them how this is driving not just safety performance, but impacting other business key performance indicators.
According to ERM Global Safety survey 2018, most companies do not understand how much they are investing in safety. How then will they know if they are obtaining optimal value from their investment in safety?
In the words of Peter Drucker, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”
Furthermore, the report also indicates few companies are using meaningful indicators to evaluate the efficacy of their safety processes and programs.
Read Also: Five ways to build an HSE career towards becoming a professional
The majority still rely on the “traditional medicine after death”- Lagging indicators such as Lost Time Accidents, Injury frequency rates, etc.
An effective and meaningful indicator should focus on culture, leadership, employee engagement, behaviors, and performance outcomes. It should help employees understand the strengths, weaknesses of their safety efforts and help safety leaders from all levels predict the future.
The following are examples of what organizations do to get insights into whether or not their investments in safety are delivering the intended outcomes.
1. Safety culture surveys.
2. Employee engagement surveys.
3. Leading Indicators.
4. Audit processes.
5. Lagging Indicators.
Organizations will benefit from understanding their current spending on HSE with the above-mentioned. Also, more importantly, how this spends is driving HSE and other critical business performance indicators.
