Are we at the tipping point yet?
Kym Bancroft
Managing Director at New View Safety | Executive HSE Leader | Organisational Psychologist | HOP | Keynote Speaker
Are we at the tipping point yet? Are we ready to embrace new safety metrics?
The answer is yes, according to further compelling research by Oguz & Hallowell (2023). For over 50 years, Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) has been the go-to metric for measuring safety performance. Now an alternative metric of?High Energy Control Assessment (HECA)?is proposed, which the authors believe is a far more important metric than TRIR.
With both the?Due Diligence Index for Safety (DDI-S)?and HECA aligning with emergent safety principles, focusing on SIF and helping officers to better understand their due diligence obligations surely it's time to say goodbye to the night-time lullaby of zero harm and overreliance on TRIFR and LTIFR, along with the false security they provide.
Highlights from the paper:
"Recent research has shown that TRIR has serious limitations that impede strategic decision-making and long-term improvement."
"Any alternative safety metric must capitalize on the strengths of TRIR while addressing its fundamental weaknesses."
"TRIR is not valid because it is not statistically stable."
"TRIR is not actionable because it does not support proactive behavior or strategic decisions."
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"Thus, TRIR and other injury rates are antithetical to modern views of safety."
"Based on the severe limitations of TRIR, there is a need for a new method of assessing safety performance."
"HECA is positioned in the middle from a timeline perspective as a monitoring variable that may moderate or explain the relationship between leading and lagging variables."
"Monitoring safety conditions may enable regular learning, real-time trending, strategic discussions and mobilization of resources before serious incidents occur."
As the authors point out,?"most modern safety professionals have transitioned away from the notion that safety is the absence of injuries to an understanding that safety is uninterrupted presence of safeguards (capacity)."
Let's start to usher in metrics such as DDI-S and HECA that?"close the gap between modern safety science and principles and current methods of measuring, monitoring, and communicating safety".
Reference: Oguz Erkal, E.D. & Hallowell, M.R. (2023, May). Moving beyond TRIR: Measuring and monitoring safety performance with high-energy control assessments.?Professional Safety, 68(5), 26-35
Palestrante, autora, coach e uma referência em empoderar indivíduos a abra?ar todo o seu potencial.
1 年Amazing, these metrics have the potential to revolutionize the way we measure, monitor, and communicate safety.
Group General Manager HSE at UGL Limited
1 年While it’s important to think about how to measure performance, the validity and predictability what is measured, it can also become a bit distracting. Measure what you can and what can provide meaning and insight around, effort, activity, risk control. In my view the value is more in the leadership conversations around the data…what is it telling you and how are you responding. There is no single holy grail of measurement.
Leading workplace and safety lawyer, author, trainer
1 年That problams with injury rate data as a measure of safety performance has been known for 30 years. The emerence of lead indicators does not address the issue and contributes to the illusion of safety. Unfortunately neither the DDI or HSEA take the issue any further, nor address the fundamental flaws of safety metrics as an indicator of safety. Finally, the idea that any of these lead inducators address legal obligations is wrong.
Director, OI & HSE
1 年Really interesting article - thank you for sharing
Global Health and Safety Manager at BlueScope
1 年Adam Wright Owen Luttrell Sam Lewis, MIEAust CPEng NER RPEQ