As we noted last week, ROI is a decision-making formula that looks to future performance. As such, it works best with measures that are predictive, rather than reactive in nature. Or, to use the business lingo, measuring success under ROI entails the use of leading rather than trailing indicators. This puts safety directors at a disadvantage. To adapt to the rigors of ROI analysis, it may become necessary to change the metrics safety directors have traditionally used to measure the success of their programs.

Why the Old Ways of Measuring Don't Work

"Historically," explains Canadian safety consultant Wayne Pardy, "safety professionals have relied on measures such as lost time injuries, frequency and severity, accident costs, etc. to evaluate safety performance." These measures look at past performance. At first blush, they also appear to provide a reliable indicator of future performance. After all, if injury rates have been low in the past, it's a sign that the safety program is effective and will continue to work well in the future.

But this isn't necessarily true. The problem with after-the-fact accident and injury statistics is that an accident has to first occur in order to have any reliable indicator of performance, notes Pardy. "This is nothing more than bean counting. It tells you nothing about system improvement opportunities or prevention strategies."

Although they are important, accident and injury indicators (including frequency and severity rates) are measures of failure, Pardy continues. They focus on the negative. They can be used for comparison purposes, but that comparison is still based on failures recorded by your safety system, as compared with your performance, and that of others. And you need to wait until you have a statistically reliable number of these indicators tracked over a reliable time frame to give you an accurate picture of your performance. This methodology is ill-suited to the demands of ROI analysis.

Towards a Better Metric

To measure success under ROI, you must turn your safety performance measurement and recognition system into an achievement-based system, rather than one based on injuries and other failures. "Safety professionals must develop measures to assess and reward positive behaviors, not just of workers but everybody in the organization, including management," Pardy explains.

100 Performance Measures

To move to an achievement-based model or a performance-based system you must establish specific goals, performance targets and standards that you can measure to determine if your system is working and whether adjustments are necessary. Which measures should you use? Much will depend on the size and characteristics of your company and the industry you're in.

But to get you going, SafetyXChange has provided a list of 100 performance measures that Pardy recommends considering. If you're a member, you can get access to the list through the Tools section of SafetyXChange

Conclusion

You can use Pardy's list of achievement-based safety criteria in Tools to set performance objectives for everyone in your company, from your most senior executive to your hourly workers. They can help structure your own achievement-based performance model to suit your unique corporate culture, safety goals and objectives.

You can also use the measures to complement one another, so that senior and middle management have to support the line in order to achieve their objectives, and workers can see a very definite relationship between their efforts and the corporate direction and philosophy of the business.

ASK THE EXPERT

Safety Management

WAYNE PARDY, CRSP
VP, Safety Management Services & Auditing
Q5 Systems Limited

For this week's "Ask the Expert," SafetyXChange is pleased to offer the services of Wayne Pardy, SafetyXChange Advisory Board Member and regular contributor to our newsletters.

Wayne Pardy is a graduate of Memorial University of Newfoundland, and is the Vice President of Safety Management Services & Auditing with Q5 Systems Limited, a Canadian-based company specializing in strategic safety management services, consulting training and auditing, as well as audit and inspection management software for environment, health, safety, quality and security professionals.

Holder of an Advanced Safety Certificate (ASC) from the National Safety Council and a Canadian Registered Safety Professional (CRSP), Wayne has been a frequent speaker at national conferences and professional development seminars, and his work has been featured in international conferences and studies in safety management in both the U.S. and Australia. He has also conducted training, auditing and consulting for business, government and labor throughout Canada for the past 20 years. Since 2000, he has assisted many Fortune 500 and 1000 companies improve and implement strategic audit management systems, facilitated through the wide range of Q5 AIMS audit technology solutions, training and consulting.

In addition to his past role as Advisory Board member for the Safety Engineering Technology Program at CONA, he has also guest lectured on safety for the School of Continuing Studies and Professional Development, Memorial University of Newfoundland. He is currently a member of both the Executive and Board of Directors of the Newfoundland and Labrador Construction Safety Association, and has chaired both the Curriculum Committee and Performance Measurement Committee of the NLCSA. Mr. Pardy is also a member of the Minister's Advisory Council on Occupational Health and Safety for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, providing strategic advice to the province on a number of key health and safety management initiatives of the Department of Labor, and the Workplace Health, Safety and Compensation Commission.

Wayne is author of the book, "Safety Incentives . . . The Pros and Cons of Award and Recognition Programs." The book, published by Moran Associates of Orange Park, Florida, in cooperation with Padro Communications of Washington, DC, explores the strategies which business, government and labor can initiate to provide positive incentives for improving safety performance.

As past chair of the Editorial Advisory Board for OHS Canada Magazine, and Contributing Editor for safety management for Canadian Occupational Safety Magazine, he is the 1991 winner of the CSSE President's Award for his two part series on "Building an Effective Safety System...Key Strategies for Maximizing Resources and Minimizing Losses." As a contributing author to Industrial Safety and Hygiene News in Pennsylvania, his feature article on Worker Empowerment and Joint Health and Safety Committees won the 1994 American Chilton Editorial Award. This marks the first and only time this award has been won by a Canadian.

Wayne is available to answer your questions regarding safety management, including safety programs, management systems, incentives, behavioral safety, auditing and employee participation challenges.

If You Have Questions for Wayne

Submit them to catherinej@bongarde.com. Wayne will try his best to answer as many of your questions as possible. We'll publish your questions and Wayne's answers in next Wednesday's SafetyXChange newsletter.

HEROES OF WORKPLACE SAFETY

Wilhelm Röntgen: The man who discovered x-rays

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen

By Glenn Demby

It's a technology that we all rely on but take for granted. It's the technology used to treat our workers after they hurt a limb, back, neck, hand or foot. It's the technology used to protect us at airports, courthouses and other public buildings. It's even the technology Superman used to protect Truth, Justice and the American Way.

The technology is the x-ray and it was discovered on this date 111 years ago. The man who discovered the x-ray was a shy and modest physicist named Wilhelm Röntgen. Born in Germany in 1845, Röntgen was an only child who loved reading and nature. At the tender age of three, the Röntgen family moved to Holland and Wilhelm was shipped off to boarding school. Nobody thought he was particularly bright. When he was 17, Wilhelm was kicked out of school for drawing an unflattering caricature of one of his teachers. In fact, the accusation was false. Another student did the drawing.

In 1865, Röntgen wanted to study physics at the University of Utrecht but was foiled by his lack of academic credentials. Undeterred, he got into the Polytechnic at Zurich by passing a highly technical exam. The rest, as they say, is history. Röntgen would thrive in his studies and become a leading professor of physics at the University of Munich.

It was in 1895 that Röntgen carved out his place in history. On the evening of November 8, Röntgen went into a dark room and discharged an electric current through a gas of very low pressure in a tube sealed with thick, black carton to block light. In the path of the rays he placed a paper plate covered on one side with barium platinocyanide. A fluorescent image appeared on the plate, even when the plate was held more than two meters from the discharge tube. A few days later, when Röntgen passed the rays through his wife's hand, the fluorescent image formed a shadow of her bones. Röntgen called the rays "x-rays" and the images a "röntgenogram."

Röntgen's discovery was immediately recognized and lauded. In 1902, Röntgen received the first Nobel Prize for physics ever awarded. Röntgen would go on to perform other important work in the field of physics but remains best remembered for x-rays. He died of cancer in 1923.

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