Posted By Andrew Powell PS Chu, Here are my thoughts, Safety targets have to be realistic and achievable. If they are too high, and they consistently fail, what are they achieving. people will soon lose interest when they consistently fail to achieve set targets. If your company have reduced targets so that they can (with work) meet them, it is reasonable. If they then increase their target every year accordingly they will make progress. An audit is only as good as the auditor. And can sometimes become a paperwork exercise alone, to check your systems, rather than checking on actual realities, Some companies work hard just prior to an audit to "cover the cracks". Surely your accident rates, percentages and Average Incident Rates reflect your safety performance(number of accidents over a month divided by number of employees). An audit should keep you on your toes and can reflect changes in legislation which again helps. Overall though, I feel that the severity and frequency of accidents in the workplace demonstrates a companies attitude towards Safety. Although you can put a lot of hard work into Safety systems and then wait months for your reward.