Safety Management can be quantified through metrics like Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) and Days Away, Restricted, Transfer (DART) to determine performance over time or performance relative to peers. Bid requirements, OSHA inspections, insurance premiums and other important business decisions are impacted by these metrics. The calculation, reporting and posting of safety performance via OSHA 300 and 300A forms is proof that safety is not a silo but engrained in all company activities.
Companies wishing to impact their metrics in a positive way must be able to gather, analyze and report their activities internally to be able to identify areas of concern. Regular communication of the trends in the data must occur throughout the company; from job sites, to managers, to stakeholders.
High performance safety cultures and programs are created over time. Management buy-in is a primary driver of these cultures that uphold accountability throughout the ranks. The best safety management programs are those that efficiently make use of analytics and reporting and communicate the intended changes (Plan-Do-Check-Act) on job sites faster and easier than others. This fosters continuous improvement at a greater rate which allows businesses to become more efficient in their respective fields relative to peers.
This ease of communication enhances visibility and transparency while allowing the business to improve its safety metrics. In turn this can reduce insurance premiums, increase access to bids and improve the equity value. OSHA benchmarking is derived from 100 workers, working 40 hour work weeks, for 50 weeks a year. If you were to start the recording and analyzing processes of safety data from the job sites that these workers were on, what would be the fastest and easiest way to do that?
Hint: it’s not a manual paper process!
As teams become more proactive in their quest to bring safety performance forwards and improve metrics, technology begins to play a larger role. As you look across your company’s operations consider how sophisticated the systems in place are and how they are performing. If safety is in need of technological improvement, consider a Safety Management Software system that will allow your team to grow as well as work with existing software already in place.
Field Eagle is an example of a good Safety Management Software that can help your team grow with a variety of features on top of Safety Management including Asset Management, Field Inspection, Risk Management and more.
