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Module - 7

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28 views11 pages

Module - 7

Uploaded by

su.hannan.bd9900
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Module 7:

Measuring performance

Key learning points:


1. What is performance measurement about?
2. How do you measure health and safety performance?
3. What is auditing?
What is performance measurement about?
So, you know why you need to manage health and safety, what you have to do and how you
can do it. We’ve also covered how you can learn when things go wrong.

But do you know how you’re doing overall? Is this year the same as last,
is it worse or is it better? Remember the football team in Module 4. They
measured their performance by matches won, drawn and lost, and their
league position.

The best way to find out is to set some indicators that enable you to
keep an eye on how you’re doing in health and safety terms.
 Performance indicators provide us with information on:

 what’s going on around us


 what’s happened so far
 potential problems or dangers that we
may need to respond to.
Proactive : Other indicators give us information about the current situation that
might impact on future performance, such as speed and traffic flow. We tend to refer
to these measures or indicators as ‘proactive’. Both types of indicators are
important.

Reactive : Some indicators give us information on the outcomes of our


actions (in this case driving), such as the distance we’ve travelled and the
number of hours we’ve spent driving. We tend to refer to these measures or
indicators as ‘reactive
How do we measure health and safety performance?

Just as in the previous examples, we have two ways of getting information about
health and safety performance:

Reactive measurement

This focuses on collecting information on the outcomes of our health and safety
management system, including accidents, incidents, ill health, the absence of
these negative events, and the number of days without an accident or incident.

You can calculate your organisation’s injury incidence rate as follows:

number of reportable injuries in a given period (such as a year)

Injury incidence rate = ‚ x 100,000


average number of employees who worked during the period

This is useful for comparing your performance year on year and for measuring your performance against
national statistics for your sector – you can get this information from the enforcing authority. Analysis of this
type of information is useful in identifying trends – for example, what types of accident are happening and how
serious they are.

However, gathering information about accidents and ill health does have limitations – can you think what these
could be?
 Proactive measurement

This type of measurement is about providing information on how


well you’re managing health and safety before undesired events
such as accidents, incidents and ill-health happen. To measure
health and safety performance in
this way you’ll need to look at the things (inputs)
that contribute to effective health and safety
management. For example:

 your work environment and equipment


 safe systems of work and procedures
 people – employees and contractors.
For example, carrying out workplace inspections can help us check that
work equipment is in good working order and the work environment is OK.
It also gives us the chance to deal with any problems before they cause
an incident. So, measuring the number of completed workplace
inspections against the number planned provides a useful indicator of how
well we’re managing health and safety.

Similarly, giving people training helps them to do their jobs safely, so measuring how
much training your staff are getting is another indicator of how well you’re managing
health and safety.

Remember, there’s no ‘one size fits all’ – different organisations will need
different indicators.

Good indicators are:

 objective and easy to measure and collect


 relevant to the organisation or group whose performance you’re measuring
 able to provide prompt and reliable indications of the level of performance
 cost-effective in terms of the effort needed to gather the information
 understood and owned by the organisation or group whose performance
you’re measuring
There’s a range of people who’ll be interested in information about an
organisation’s performance measurement. Some will be internal to the
organisation, for example:

 senior management
 line managers
 employees
 safety/employee representatives
 shareholders.

Some will be external to the organisation, for example:

 enforcement agencies
 insurers
 clients
 the public
 shareholders.

These people or bodies will need performance information in different formats


and for different purposes.
What is auditing?
Auditing aims to find objective evidence
(or evidence that’s as objective as possible) for
whether the current way of managing health and
safety meets the organisation’s health and safety
policy and aims.

There are two levels of auditing:

 internal auditing is done by staff within the organisation and helps


managers by measuring the effectiveness of health and safety
management

 external auditing is done by a third party and provides an independent view.


It often represents the interests of other stakeholders as well as management.
Audits typically use three types of evidence:
 documentation – to check whether it
adequately covers the hazards in the
organisation

 interviews – to check that awareness, know-how


and resources are appropriate

 observation – to check what’s described in


the documentation is really present in the
workplace

Audit findings are of little use unless we act on them. As a manager, you may be
involved, along with senior management, in producing an action plan to deal with
audit findings.
Any Question, Please…?

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