I've been tasked with setting some H&S goals & objectives for my organisation to measure its performance year in year out, and Im interested in what targets your own companies set themselves annually? All ideas welcome. (we are a medium sized manufacturing firm)

We have a zero injury rate as a goal. From a regular 12 or so p.a. when I joined the company, down to 3 last year and they were only reported as those minor cuts were ones I found out about. Badger

Max, I agree. And there's another much more invidious and dangerous potential. The Texas BP fire was due in part to the fact that the company concentrated on operational safety, for which there were targets, and in this case that seemed to be to the detriment of process safety, with appalling consequences. There is always a cost to controls, and setting a tight control regime such as zero accidents is relatively demadning of resources, leaving less time and effort to be expended elsewhere. Not suggesting we shouldn't try to reduce the incidence of injury, but an exclusive focus on this can have unintended consequences, John

The problem here is that when people hear the word "targets" they automatically think about accident statistics! In my opinion NOT setting targets and objectives is more harmful! Any management system needs objectives and targets (see HSG65, 18001) which are carefully planned for and strived towards. I agree that accident statistics aren't the best target - if you do a quick search there's loads of posts on the subject. That said there are loads of other targets that can be used. Some can be statistical and measurable e.g. risk assessments completed, near misses reported, proportion of competent staff (i.e. based on determined skill matrices / training requirements etc.) but some need not be e.g. implementing new processes, safety campaigns, revising policies etc. etc. Hope this helps, Ian

Agree entirely with Phillips20760 (sounds like somebody from a bad 1970's sf dystopia); our targets this year are a mix of things, insofar as they refer to accidents its about improving reporting. The main strands though are two-fold, one is to measure and begin to improve the H&S culture, the other is about managing occupational ill-health, so a mix of statistics and aspirations, but they all have outcome measures attached, John