For the sake of clarity the 'injury free' part means 'no lost time injuries'. So, consider two companies: one rarely goes a month (200,000hrs) without at least one or two lost time injuires, the other has recently celebrated 5 million hrs without a lost time injury. When you get to +1 million hrs, what initatives do YOU use to maintain that? Aren't your systems and people good enough when you are capable of hitting 5 milion hrs...without making everyone too scared to use the toilet without a permit...what else is there to do? "Preventing ALL injuries" is not the next step, as someone once said in these forums, "how much will you spend on preventing a paper cut?". Preventing every single minor injury takes humanity in the direction of neurosis; personally I like getting out of bed each day! Surely when your organisation is capable of hitting millions of hours injury-free then altruistically speaking shouldn't you move on and help out some other folk?

Are you considering only physical inuries? If you include health problems remember that these are frequently chronic, so whilst you have not had any incidents until now there is no guarantee that one or more could not occur tomorrow. Also keep in mind that our knowledge of how our body interacts with the environment develops continuously. In my own particular sphere of activity we constantly have to review our approach as new knowledge becomes available, in particular on how the body responds to chemical exposure. It was only recently in the history of occupational health that the concept that skin exposure to isocyanates could trigger sensitisation and asthma which then dictated a different approach to managing exposure. I think that one of the dangers is that we may become complacent and think we know all that we need to know.

My personal opinion is companies who can advertise like this probably pressure employees not to report or pay them for being 'off but not off' if you get what i mean. And the poor sod who then takes time off due to a work injury will probably have senior management glaring at them for months...

Thanks for comments, healthy discussion. Yes there are many other measures and yes "lost time injury" recording is bit of a beast and can be manipulated. The crux of this matter is, irrespective of all the little details (audit actions all closed, 100% legal compliance, best practices) that remain even when you achieve +1 million hrs injury-free, how far do you want to take it? We are educated to ALARP principles, which are sympathetic to the inescapable fact that, for an infinate amount of factors that we can't control, occasionally a hazard will be realised (not even necessarily resulting in a lost time injury). Despite our best efforts, sometimes lightening still occurs. If you've got your organisation to +1 million hrs then that's pretty good. You're not killing anyone, no one is having an injury that is so severe they require time of work. You could say this is a measure that ALARP has been achieved. If we're still not satisfied with millions of hours without a lost time injury then when will we be satisfied, when can we say "job done, things are good enough here"? Or do we want to keep pushing and pushing until everyone is wrapped in flameproof, non-harmful bubble wrap? What is our ultimate, realistic, objective?

No it doesn't. That doesn't cover chronic occupational ill-health and disease - and these aren't "little details" for those left to suffer. 100% audit compliance? Really? I guess you've rendered yourself redundant then! ;-) If you want a reality check on things, you could consider the British Sugar Case (2005?) (lots of resource on the web). They also thought they were doing well...............

Wow, seems not everyone's heard of 'devils advocate', breathe in, relax. Now I'm a bit worried... "There is never, ever, ever an end point"...what kind of society are you the architect of? One where people can't ride donkeys on the beach incase they fall off? One where snowball fights are banned? That is what no end point looks like, that is the result of people who don't know when to stop. The very kind of neurosis that I referenced to provoke the discussion. Ron, "no lost time" was intended as a catch all statement. I wasn't inferring that chronic occupational ill health was a "little detail", not sure how you arrived at that, but thanks for making me smile.

It was very subtle, so subtle I missed your point. Just the kind of attitude that makes this such a great nation! Are you chartered?

Hartman, you raise an interesting point, one which I think is a very valid challenge. I take it that your reference to a simplistic negative measure is merely illustrative rather than being the way you judge success. On the face of it what you are saying is that there must be a point or level of performance that is good enough. You are quite right in my view; there always has to be point at which more protection is neither desirable nor achievable. However, that does not exclude further improvement at some point in the future but for now enough is enough. For now your work then focuses more on maintaining that level of performance. Those two positions are not mutually exclusive are they? And it is certainly not a reason to move on unless you are only interested in situations that obviously require improvement now. The other matter is that point of acceptance also moves with time and technology; that is why someone needs to be keeping an eye on developments and identifying what and when improvements can be made. Looks a pretty good full time job to me :-) p48