17-03-2014, 04:57 PM
A GUIDE TO MEASURING HEALTH & SAFETY PERFORMANCE
INTRODUCTION
This new document developed by HSE provides practical guidance for people
who understand the principles of health and safety management and wish to
improve the measurement of health and safety performance in their
organisations. We would welcome feedback on the ideas presented here.
The guidance on measuring health and safety performance is organised
under these main headings:
Why measure?
What to measure.
When to measure.
Who should measure.
How to measure.
The guidance expands on the Measuring performance chapter in HSE's
publication HSG65 Successful health and safety management,1 which
provides guidance on managing health and safety. The chapter Planning and
implementing from HSG 65 has been included with this guidance to provide
background information which will put it into context. You may find it useful to
read this chapter first.
What the guidance is not
This guidance does not provide:
• a simple checklist for measuring health and safety management;
• a simple answer to the question ‘how do we measure our health and
safety performance?’; or
• a definitive list of health and safety performance measures suitable for
all organisations.
Why is guidance necessary?
Measurement is a key step in any management process and forms the basis
of continual improvement. If measurement is not carried out correctly, the
effectiveness of the health and safety management system is undermined and
there is no reliable information to inform managers how well the health and
safety risks are controlled.
In the UK, the HSC and Government’s Revitalising Health and Safety2
strategy and the requirements of the Turnbull Report3 on corporate
governance provide a renewed focus on health and safety performance and
the control of health and safety risks.
Although there is much information available on performance measurement
generally, there is little which looks at health and safety in particular which
organisations can apply to their own circumstances.
HSE’s experience is that organisations find health and safety performance
measurement a difficult subject. They struggle to develop health and safety
performance measures which are not based solely on injury and ill health
statistics.
Addressing different information needs
Information from health and safety performance measurement is needed by
the people in the organisation who have particular responsibilities within the
health and safety management system. These will include directors, senior
managers, line managers, supervisors, health and safety professionals and
employees/safety representatives. They each need information appropriate to
their position and responsibilities within the health and safety management
system.
For example, what the CEO of a multinational organisation needs to know
from the performance measurement system will differ in detail and nature
from the manager of a particular location. And this may differ in detail from a
departmental manager in that location.
There needs to be overall coherence in approach so that individual measuring
activities are aligned within the overall performance measurement framework.
In effect this results in a hierarchical set of linked measures which reflect the
organisation’s structure.
Measuring the hazard burden
The range of activities undertaken by an organisation will create hazards,
which will vary in nature and significance. The range, nature, distribution and
significance of the hazards (the hazard burden) will determine the risks which
need to be controlled.
Ideally the hazard should be eliminated altogether, either by the introduction
of inherently safer processes or by no longer carrying out a particular activity,
but this is not always practical.
If the hazard burden is reduced and if other things (variables) remain
constant, including consistent operation of the health and safety management
system, this will result in lower overall risk and a consequent reduction in
injuries and ill health. For example, the inventory of hazardous materials might
be reduced so that the associated risks are reduced.
Of course, the hazard burden may increase as the organisation takes on new
activities or makes changes to existing ones. For example, increasing the
throughput on a chemical plant might involve larger inventories and larger
pipe diameters resulting in potentially larger releases.