Meeting Safety Management Challenges To manage effectively, management needs information which tells them in real time how well the organizational systems are meeting business challenges, customer needs, innovation and growth. By Peter FurstNov 24, 2020 Generally, prior to 1992 all businesses measured their success based on financial (outcome) metrics alone. Kaplan & Norton wrote an article for the Jan-Feb 1992 issue of the Harvard Business Review magazine titled “The Balanced Scorecard – Measures That Drive Performance” which revolutionized how businesses manage performance and measure outcomes. Now, just about every business uses some form of the Balanced Scorecard. As discussed in a previous article, there are problems with safety management. Another impediment is in the area of safety metrics. Management is responsible for efficient and effective operations. Information is required to accomplish this. The traditional financial measures used were historical outcome metrics, which tell you how you have done, but not much else. To manage effectively, management needs information which tells them in real time how well the organizational and operational systems are meeting business challenges, customer needs, innovation and growth. These are process metrics. Management also needs information on how quickly things are improving, which are also progress metrics. All three metrics are required to manage effectively. Safety Metrics Organizations are required by law to keep track of their recordable accidents, with some exceptions. They are also required to provide that information to the Department of Labor, which issues annual average injury and fatality metrics for various industries. Organizations can use this to gauge their comparative performance. Doing better than the industry average is a rather poor target to strive to outperform. Insurance companies who offer workers compensation policies track their insured’s accident losses by total number (frequency) and how costly they are (severity). This determines the premium they will charge for that policy in the upcoming year. Usually their loss control department (or the broker) will review the losses on an annual basis with their insured. They may offer suggested interventions so as to reduce the losses and therefore control the cost of the insurance policies going forward. Let's block ads! (Why?)