Page 80 - Occupational Health & Safety, June 2019

SAFETY MANAGEMENT
What Good Looks Like: Making the Case for Leading Indicators
It is not the adoption of leading indicators or the collection of leading indicators that leads to improvement, it is the actions taken with the information that determine success.
BY CARY USREY
The safety profession has an unhealthy fixa- tion on measuring using purely negative values. OSHA recordable and lost-time inju- ries spring to mind—both are lagging and, I would suggest, negative indicators. Once they occur, there is nothing that can be done but to investigate and hopefully learn enough to avoid similar incidents in the future. But even these metrics are flawed in that a lack of injuries or incidents does not necessarily equate to a safe workplace. It could be a matter of just being lucky.
Many organizations now realize that simply mea- suring lagging data in the form of incidents and in- juries isn’t enough. Because of this, safety-conscious companies have begun to adopt leading indicators that attempt to show how the safety process is work- ing. The most common indicators are near-miss re- ports and work site observations. Near misses, how- ever, are merely incidents that did not reach their full potential and rely on a mishap to occur before being observed and reported. In a mature and effec- tive safety process, leading indicators further up the value chain are used, including observable inputs such as the behaviors and conditions that could lead to the near miss or incident.
The Purpose of Metrics
While safety experts have made a sound case to adopt leading safety indicators instead of relying solely on lagging safety indicators (e.g., injury rates), the real- ity is that creating and sustaining metrics for leading safety indicators can be daunting for many. While lag- ging indicators share a universal set of metrics driven by regulatory requirements and are frequently used globally by organizations, leading indicator metrics are varied and are often slow to be developed. As a result, leading indicator metrics are often glacial in adoption, even within a single organization.
As a baseline, a metric is defined as a quanti- fiable measure that is used to track and assess the status of a specific process. Often a metric is a sim- ple proxy or substitute for a broader and generally more complex process. When implemented cor- rectly, metrics can provide organizations with the following potential benefits:
■ Guide stakeholders on how they are doing and whether they are meeting expectations
■ Indicate where resources need to be proactive- 76 Occupational Health & Safety | JUNE 2019
ly focused on the most critical issues
■ Allow for comparisons, either to each other or
to an established set of norms, such that deviations or exceptions can be readily spotted
■ Enable organizations to focus on the right things at the right times
■ Create consistent measures within an organi- zation and communicate findings and direction
■ Identify gaps in safety processes and systems
■ Assess leadership and employee engagement Despite the many potential benefits, there are
some caveats and rules that must be established in or- der to utilize metrics effectively:
■ Like a goal, a good metric must be S.M.A.R.T.— specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. Lofty and idealistic aspirations belong in vision state- ments, not metrics.
■ For a metric to work, expectations must be set and clearly communicated. Specifically, criteria are necessary to indicate a “good” range and a “needs im- provement” range or set of ranges. Ideally, these rang- es have prescribed action items established to drive improvement of the process.
■ Metrics are indicators of a process. Manage- ment of the process is the focus, not management of the metrics. Gaming of metrics can and will happen when managing to the metric. In this case, you get what you ask for.
■ Multiple metrics often provide better insight into a complex process than a single metric.
■ Both quantitative and qualitative metrics should be established to ensure high-level KPIs are worthy of consideration. For example, the number of safety inspections is not as valuable without also con- sidering the quality of inspections.
■ Collecting metrics is only part of the process. Acting on the information is necessary to drive im- provement.
Which Leading Indicators to Use
There are two primary leading indicators from which most other metrics derive:
■ Inspections—a collection of one or more observations.
■ Observations—a single instance of a behavior or condition (e.g., a worker wearing a hard hat). Ob- servations can be determined to be safe or at risk.
These two primary metrics are the basic building
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