Hi,

I am after getting some opinions on setting company targets of zero accidents. Is this a positive message to send out to employees or does it promote the potential of the wrong behaviours? Whilst it's not right to target a number of accidents that would be acceptable, is targeting a company at zero the right approach or could this lead to hidden accident reports? If a 'target zero' was adopted, how would an organisation go around dealing with accidents if they did occur, resulting at the target of zero being missed?

Interested to hear the different thoughts and experiences on this.

Thanks in advance

Zero is aspirational not a metric - bit of light reading:

http://forum.iosh.co.uk/posts/t126332-IOSH-joins-Vision-Zero-campaign

http://forum.iosh.co.uk/posts/t120377-Target-Zero​​​​​​​

Why measure success based on the absence of negatives.  If you have an injury on day one you have effectively failed, what does that do to motivation in achieving the target

It's like determining the success of your marriage based on the number of affairs you have had rather than also considering all the things that make it good.

I also think that it is dangerous.  You may well reduce your minor incidents [reporting] but don’t be surprised when you have a serious injury or fatality.  And if you do achieve zero do you celebrate or do you wonder, were you good or were you lucky

http://www.safetydifferently.com/zero-vision-and-the-western-salvation-narrative/

Edited by user 28 February 2019 06:26:47(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Originally Posted by: Mid Life

As has been suggested, Zero accidents is an aspiration, we're human at the end of the day and we will have minor accidents. By having Zero accidents the reporting figures will be manipulated or the accidents wont be reported to maintain that zero figure.

An actual zero accident rate will either identify that the orgnisation either has a poor reporting system or that there not reported at all.

This will lead to you to not learning from minor accidents, preventing major accidents and stop you potentially revieiwing processes and RAs etc due to not being notified of an accident. 

Can you not turn your figures round for example have a minimum of 50 hazard observations in the Reporting period and 20 Near Misses reported in this Reporting period to support a Work safe Home Safe ethic.. 

 

Having targets for leading metrics in my opinion undermines they systems credibility.  If people report because they must meet a target, you get either false reports or very poor-quality data and at the end of the day they are not doing because they are engaged, they are doing because they are being forced to do it.

Why should there be any focus on achieving metrics.  If you have a good system and engaged leadership, the numbers will do what you want them to do naturally.  Put energy into developing better leaders rather than chasing numbers

I agree with the comments, the zero accident target is a bit of an old fashioned approach, and although its seen as having to have a level of acceptance that acidents will happen the number of minor accidents doesnt correlate with the number of major accidents that could happen.

I also found that by communicating and reminding staff that they should report all accidents no matter how minor our accident numbers actually increased.

In my opinion its better to have accidents reported and then address the cause.

Keep it simple, in my experience, zero accidents is a sensible GOAL hoewever not a sensible TARGET. For instance if your target is zero accidents in a year, and you have an accident on the 1st Jan, you have blown it! Far better to go for a target which is achievable in your environment eg "to reduce finger injuries by 30%" or similar. Of course, you should NEVER set a target which is unrealistic.

Like many others, ZERO is aspirational, targets should potentially look at reduction through statistical format e.g. Accident Frequency Rates (work out previous years, and work a saving of 10% for example).  Be specific in reduction of accident elements, as earlier mentioned, hand injuries, manual handling injuries etc.  Consider the Occupational Health element as a target - conduct all FLT driver medicals....

There is so much to consider, but targets are to be SMART - we use AFR as you can have busy months with lots of man-hours, no accidents; compared to a number of accidents and reduced hours?  Always keeps you looking at addressing elements throughout the year too.

Waz