Posted By A Campbell Wayne, Not a fan of KPI's... the ultimate KPI... zero accident rate! Achievable??? Then what is an achievable KPI??

Posted By Philip McAleenan Wayne in responding to a colleague on the the issue of KPIs I searched through my files and came across the following which I had posted on this forum some years back. It has relevance I believe because it turns the process on its head and asked managers to measure positive outcomes rather than negative ones. I have used the example of confined spaces training to illustrate, but any area of operational management can be monitored and performances measures in the same way,

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BS8800, a Guide to occupational health & safety management systems, simplifies the process. It talks about setting targets which “are the detailed performance requirements that should be achieved by designated persons or teams in order to implement the [OH&S] plan. The plan should specify who is to do what, by when and with what result”. Thus a key objective may be that all confined space entry workers are trained, assessed and certified fit and competent to use RPE within 6 months. The results or outcomes expected will be documentation of who has been trained, when it took and the assessment results, including certificates. A plan will be drawn up to achieve this objective and within that plan will be targets such as: 1. prepare a list of all those to be trained, 2. obtain evidence of medical and physical fitness to use RPE, 3. schedule training dates, 4. appoint trainer/assessor, 5. notify all listed employees of training dates, 6. provide training venue, equipment etc. 7. carry out training and assessment, 8. obtain assessment documentation & certificates, 9. review the outcomes and prepare any necessary remedial actions (e.g. where one or more failed any element of the fitness or assessment procedures). Thus we can see that by setting a clear objective or standard, namely that all confined space workers are fit and competent to use RPE, the performance requirements to achieve that objective follow. And by monitoring each performance requirement in turn we can effectively measure progress towards achieving the key objective. And of course once the objectives has been achieved, a new objective can be agreed, for example, maintain the level of competence and fitness to use RPE amongst all confined space workers, and corresponding targets to achieve this drawn up. Regards, Philip

Posted By Andy Petrie decide what you want to use, measure current performance, reduce the target 10% year on year

Posted By mark linton We have tried the following to encourage more proactive participation in safety (these are last years targets, 2009's have built on these): - targets for risk assessments. - targets on completion of incident reports. - target for audit score (not ideal as a 'poor' audit gives us areas of improvement but if it is not a target, where is the motivation to improve) - where an accident occurs report to be forwarded to H&S Manager within 7 days. The background is a little to long winded for the forum. How are they working? Too earlier to tell, but there was a correlation between those that took the targets on with enthusiasm and those that saw a reduction in accident rates from the previous year.

Posted By Phil Rose I may well be a lone voice in the dark here, but I have never been too enthused with PI's on accident rates etc. I have never understood how I can realistically compare one accident with another really, as some have potential for a far more significant outcome than may have actually happened. Similarly, trying to compare 'reportable' accidents is a bit hit and miss at times. Recently I have reported over 3 day injuries resulting in literally 4 days off and an over 3 day injury that has already resulted in 3 months off and is ongoing. I know that some orgs benchmark on the number of reportable injuries, but using my 'real life' example how can you compare the two?

Posted By wayne purchase hello all, many thanks for the advice i will endervour to get put in place

Posted By Andy Petrie The 10% is what I use, seems as good as anything, I've also seen others use a similar approach. I've also instigated reporting in Weighted Injury Rate (WIR) where I rank injuries using the RSSB weighting 1 Fatality = 10 Major Injuries = 200 Reportable Minor Injuries = 1000 Non-Reportable Minor Injuries I report per 1,000,000 man hours and it gives a much more realistic figure than AFR as it differentiates Major Injuries and also includes non-reportable injuries.

Posted By mark linton Merv I apologise but I feel the need to answer in full. Seven days is to get the investigation done and dusted and reported within a week to the H&S Manager. Maybe other organisations would expect it to be done quicker but from where we were starting from seven days was a vast improvement. From small acorns..... We are at a very early stage of our development when it comes to H&S and previous focus of KPI's had always been on the number of accidents, which in my view: - this is a negative target and doesn't take into account good work being done. - it is a bit late in the day once the accident has occurred - it doesn't help to reduce accidents by saying 'don't have accidents' or 'don't have any more accidents than...', it doesn't point someone in the direction of what they need to do. - people spent time arguing over whether something was an accident or incident rather than what they were going to do about prevention. There were behaviours that we wanted people to practice to prevent accidents (completing incident reports in a timely fashion, carrying out risk assessments) and learn from accidents (i.e. timely, for us, accident investigations) so these formed the basis of the KPI's as a driver to get them done. Accidents are still recorded and there is a site target but that rests with the Site H&S Manager. I hope that clarifies my previous post.