Is your workplace as ‘safe’ as you think?
Has your organisation seen a reduction in worker’s compensation claims or incidents recently?
Does your organization’s safety performance rise and fall on the LTIFR?
Before you give yourself a giant pat on the back I’d like you to answer the question below.
- What specific initiatives or programs have resulted in this ‘success’?
If you are struggling to answer the question above, your workplace may not be as safe as you think.
Many organisations focus on statistics such as Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR), numbers of incidents and worker’s compensation claims. These are known as Lag indicators. This means that they measure the your organisation’s safety performance in a historical sense. While these traditional safety metrics have some worth, for example telling you how many people got hurt and how badly, they do have their drawbacks and are often overused as evidence of safety improvement.
The main drawback of Lag indicators is that these statistics do not tell you how well your organisation is doing at preventing workplace injury and illness.
Overuse of Lag indicators combined with economic variables can result in organisations operating under a false sense of success, and in turn, being complacent and ignoring uncontrolled risks in the workplace.
Lead indicators more effectively track the success of the organisation’s preventative safety program by measuring the activities which were carried out in order to prevent and control injury.
Examples of Lead indicators include:
number of closed out hazards,
inspections or audits,
training sessions
It is vital that organisations include Lead indicators into their reporting frameworks in order to understand the organisation’s true safety performance. A combination of Lead and Lag indicators provide a more comprehensive snapshot of the organisations safety performance.
I have previously discussed the issue of economic decline, cost reduction and the impact on workplace health and safety programs in my article when times are tough, and the need for organisations to be honest with themselves regarding their safety performance in my blog –safety let’s get real. In the same vein it is important that organisations understand and are honest with themselves regarding the potential impact economic variables may have on their safety performance.
It has been documented that in times of economic decline or higher unemployment, the number of reported workplace incidents and worker’s compensation claims tend to reduce. This is said to be as a result of perceived higher personal cost to the worker -loss of job, lack of alternative employment etc acting as a deterent in reporting the injury or claiming compensation. (source Boon & van Ours 2006).
Between July 2015 and July 2016 Queensland’s unemployment rate rose disproportionately from that of the rest of Australia (source Qld Treasury labour market report July 2016).
For an organisation focused on Lag indicators this trend might have been interpreted as evidence of workplace safety program success, whereas the reality could be quite the opposite.
The danger in this situation is that the organisation, falsely under the impression of safety success, is actually sitting on a ticking time bomb of workplace injury and worker’s compensation claims.
An organisation using a combination of lead and lag indicators is better placed to identify and understand cyclical fluctuations in workplace injury reporting and claims but also to ensure that its resources remain focused on the prevention of workplace injury and illness.
Perhaps you might consider where your organisation lies in this scenario. Do you have certainty that your safety performance is measured accurately and you are on the right track or are you taking the credit for a lull in incident reports.
Christina Willcox MHSc; PostGradDip OHS; BBus(HRM)
Workplace Health & Safety Specialist
christina.willcox@hrbd.com.au
07 3890 2066
www.hrbd.com.au
