Creating Safety Key Performance Indicators that help you build a safe workplace for your team. Learn more about how you can build or strengthen yours.
KPIs are the ROCKET FUEL for building a safe workplace! Have you ever been tasked with building Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for safety? It's not uncommon. When a company is building a safety culture from scratch, the leadership team is likely to ask for a list of measurable criteria that can be put in place to ensure that the culture is actually making progress. Don't find yourself scrambling at the last minute to create something from thin air. The Safety Evolution team has put together some seriously helpful stuff to aid you in building KPIs and Metrics that will give a genuine reflection of your safety culture.
Leading Indicators are proactive and predictive measures.
We define Leading Indicators as - Proactive, preventative, and predictive measures that monitor and provide current information about the effective performance, activities, and processes of an EHS management system.
Leading Indicators drive the identification and elimination or control of risk in the workplace that can cause incidents and injuries.
In short, this means all the safety activities that you and your team do daily to stop events from happening. They could include anything you do to protect the safety of your team, such as Field Level Hazard Assessments (FLHA's), Inspections, Training, Competency Checklists, Safety Meetings, and Hazard Identification.
Lagging Indicators are passive and measure the success of past performance.
Lagging Indicators are defined as - Measuring the effectiveness of a company's health and safety program by tracking incident statistics.
Lagging Indicators tell you how all the effort your team made actually turned out. A great example is if you see your incident rates decreasing then you know that your efforts are working.
It is important to capture your leading and lagging indicators.
It doesn't work to just record one type of indicator. You need to make sure when you are building your Key Performance Indicators that you are capturing both lagging and leading in order to compare your performance over time
Gathering and entering data for your Key Performance Indicators takes time and effort. It is important to begin this process by looking at your "WHY?"
Check out David Brennan, co-founder of Safety Evolution talking about his experience creating KPI's in the workplace below:
Start by finding the direction of the company. What is the business trying to do? What is the information that the management team or client requires? What are the challenges that you, as a safety professional, face? What are you wanting to accomplish?
Once you have answered these questions, step back and think:
Key Performance Indicators, built with intention, help reduce workplace incidents and provide leadership with comparative data that motivates connection to the Safety Management program. KPIs keep workers up to date with safety trends and gives credibility to the company's safety culture. And last, but not least, KPIs shine a bright light on compliance issues.
Let's dig in and see how we can make the Safety Program work for the company. What needs to be measured? Will the data measured in the KPIs aid the company in reaching its goals?
Track data from the list below to develop Key Performance Indicators that will give a well-rounded overview of the company's progress and a clear picture of the health of the safety culture.
Lagging indicator but still very important and acts as a benchmark. Look at these numbers in relation to the number of employees, rate of occurrence, and frequency. The KPI for the rate of injury should be watched carefully when new equipment is introduced or when the work scope changes.
Goes a long way in accident prevention when reported correctly and is a measurable way to predict and plan for the prevention of future incidents and injuries. Important reporting channel generates employee involvement. Positive reinforcement should be given to employees involved in near-miss reporting.
When done regularly they ensure due diligence. What is the finding of safety audits?
Not just "fixing" issues but using these to look at patterns in the workplace. Take a good look at the hierarchy of controls and determine if existing controls have been adequate.
Here we not only track new employee training but also ongoing competency for current employees and any required certifications. Track retention rates and what people are actually learning from safety training and toolbox talks.
The percentage of the workforce that is trained and certified is an important metric. Not just who has been trained but also the quality of training. Long-term retention of training material is also a good indicator.
This should include both mental and physical wellness in the workplace. Identifying and tracking leading and lagging indicators here can give great insight into how your safety program is actually impacting the health of the team.
A mathematical formula is used to calculate lost time injury frequency rate by period of time.
Lost time injuries X 1,000,000
Total hour worked
The number of lost-time injuries per million hours worked can be found by multiplying lost-time injuries by 1,000,000 and dividing that by total hours worked. The time frame can be monthly, quarterly, or yearly depending on the size of the company.
Tip 1 is to keep KPIs visible to everyone.
Tip 2 is to keep KPIs simple.
Tip 3 is to remember that familiarity creates contempt.
Tip 4 is to use your KPIs as a strategy to build safety culture.
*Need a better way to track your safety KPIs and build your safety program? Safety Evolution's safety software simplifies the tracking of KPIs by automatically capturing leading indicators like FLHA completions, inspection results, training records, and corrective action closure rates in one system. With real-time dashboards, you can present meaningful data to management and build the case for your safety culture—without relying on spreadsheets or manual entry.*
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