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Guide to Measuring Hse Performance

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A GUIDE TO MEASURING
HEALTH & SAFETY
PERFORMANCE
December 2001
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MEASURING HEALTH AND SAFETY PERFORMANCE
Contents
Introduction
How will this guidance help me?
What the guidance is not
Why is guidance necessary?
Why measure performance?
Introduction
Providing information
Answering questions
Decision making
Addressing different information needs
What to measure
Introduction
Measuring the hazard burden
Measuring the health and safety management system
Measuring failure - reactive monitoring
Measuring the health and safety culture
Planning and implementing - a more detailed look
When to measure performance
Who should measure performance
How to measure performance
Introduction
Deriving performance measures …show more content…

They struggle to develop health and safety performance measures which are not based solely on injury and ill health statistics. The traditional approach to measuring health and safety performance
If managing directors or CEOs were asked how they measured their companies’ performance, they would probably mention measures like percentage profit, return on investment or market share. A common feature of the measures quoted would be that they are generally positive in nature - reflecting achievement - rather than negative, reflecting failure.
If the same people were asked how they measured their companies’ health and safety performance, it is likely that the only measure quoted would be injury statistics. While the general business performance of an organisation is subject to a range of positive measures, for health and safety it too often
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comes down to one negative measure, injury and ill health statistics - measures of failures.
Health and safety differs from many areas measured by managers because success results in the absence of an outcome (injuries or ill health) rather than a presence. But a low injury or ill-health rate, even over a period of years, is no guarantee that risks are being controlled and will not lead to injuries or ill health in the future. This is particularly true in organisations where there is a low probability of accidents but where major hazards are present. Here the historical record can be a

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