How good is your company’s safety program? You may have one in place, but like many companies, you may not be tracking its success in order to make the right choices going forward. Businesses can assess the effectiveness of their safety training programs by tracking key performance indicators, or KPIs, related to incident reduction, employee engagement and safety culture improvement.
What Are Safety KPIs?
Safety key performance indicators allow an organization to measure its safety metrics based on real-life incidents. Keeping track of these health and safety KPIs allows a business to accurately measure how safe the work environment is for workers and determine whether the organization is within regulatory compliance guidelines issued by organizations such as the Occupational Safety Health Administration (OSHA). By tracking these KPIs, you can determine which safety standards you’re actually achieving, and which standards require more resources allocated for them. Since companies seldom have limitless resources for safety enforcement, it makes sense to use budgets toward areas that most need improvement.
Important workplace KPIs to track include:
Safety incidents. This is a measurement of the sum of workplace accidents or incidents incurred by employees over a set period of time. One example is to measure all safety incidents that follow a six-month period after the implementation of a new technology or piece of machinery. This will give you an idea of whether the new process is increasing the number of injuries or incidents, and help you weigh the value of the process against the costs of injuries.
Lost time injury frequency rate (LTIFR). A lost time injury is any workplace injury sustained by an employee that prevents them from being able to perform their job for at least one day or shift. The Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate is determined by calculating the number of lost time injuries that occurred during the designated reporting time period. Most companies choose to calculate LTIFR per one million man-hours worked. The formula for LTIFT is as follows: ([Number of lost time injuries in the reporting period] x 1,000,000)/(Total hours worked in the reporting period).
Employee attendance rates. This is an important metric to track because it gives important clues about the health of the workforce. Calculating employee attendance rates also helps you learn which employees are more likely to call in sick due to health issues and whether any health issues correlate with working conditions, such as summer heat or long overtime hours.
Health and safety prevention costs. It’s important to have a baseline of employee safety data before investing in safety equipment or processes so you can analyze the effectiveness of your health and safety programs. If your organization invests in modern safety equipment, for example, you will want to know the overall cost and maintenance costs of that equipment and compare them to the costs of injuries and lost work time before the investment was made.
Hire a Workplace Safety Consultant
Workplace safety consultants are experts in implementing programs that will help you keep track of critical workplace safety KPIs. These consultants can help train your personnel in safety processes and compliance, and help you build an enforcement program and a tracking program for any injuries that do occur during working hours.
In Southern California, Unishield has been providing businesses with the highest quality workplace safety training and compliance solutions for employers. In addition, Unishield offers first aid kits and medical supplies, first aid restocking services, industrial safety equipment, and portable emergency medical equipment such as the lifesaving AED (automatic external defibrillator). Call 800-480-5855 or visit our website for more information.