There are four main reasons for generating and using management information for health and safety aspects:
- to decide which parameters to set targets for in line with management policies;
- to identify variances to targets and implement plans to correct them;
- for occupational health purposes; and
- to compare your company’s performance with publicly available information, e.g. employee absence data published annually by the CBI.
Good control over occupational health will require a variety of key performance indictors (KPIs) for different businesses. However, certain elements will be common to most.
These indicators may be proactive or reactive. Positive, proactive indicators, or leading indicators may include: proportion of risk assessments completed on time, audit outcomes and actions, satisfactory completion of reviews, improvement projects etc.
The following is a list of typical reactive indicators. They can be used to compare performance year on year. As indicated, they are usually best expressed as frequency rates rather than simply as numbers. For example, an absolute number of injuries needs to be related to the total number of employees at the time such as through a simple ratio e.g. per 100,000 employees.
- Total person-days lost through sickness that is work-related.
This is usually expressed in the total number of days absence/employee/year or as a percentage of available days. This will include absence that is self-certificated and GP certificated.
In order to gather this information readily, it is necessary to have a question on your self-certification form that asks ‘Was your absence work-related?’. It will also be necessary to have a system to establish whether GP certificated lost time was work-related. See the section on Absence Interviews in the EEF publication Fit for Work.
- Total person-days lost through sickness that is not work-related.
This is usually expressed in the total number of days absence/employee/year or as a percentage of available days. This will include absence that is self-certificated and GP certificated.
- Total person-days lost through sickness, injury or other reasons where management has not given approval prior to the absence occurring.
This is usually expressed in the total number of days absence/employee/year or as a percentage of available days. This value will be the sum of 1 and 2 above. As a guide for industrial businesses, the EEF survey for 2004 average days lost/employee/year was 8.08 days.
- Total number of accidents, i.e. number of entries in the accident book.
This should be expressed in a form suitable to your business, but if you want to compare with the statistics published on the HSE website, you will need to express the ratios as accident numbers per 100,000 employees.
- Total number of lost time incidents (LTIs), i.e. the number of absences exceeding 1 day, not including the day of the incident.
The HSE does not quote this figure in its statistics, but it is more likely to provide useful information than the RIDDOR ‘more than 3 day’ accidents, especially for the smaller business.
- Total number of RIDDOR ‘more than 3 day’ accidents, i.e. the number of absences exceeding 3 days, not including the day of the incident.
These also needed to be reported under the RIDDOR Regulations. Again, if you want to compare with the statistics published on the HSE website, you will need to express the ratios as accident numbers per 100,000 employees.
This management information should be reviewed regularly at both management meetings and at health and safety committee meetings. Trends in results can help identify where resources need to be focused for improvement plans.