In every workplace, measuring performance is imperative to indicate how the business is doing. Generally, these measurements focus on financial performance and productivity, but also cover other, wider areas, including safety.
Measurements also provide the workforce with an idea of what is important – what we measure matters!
When it comes to health and safety, one of the most common measurements is TRIFR – Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate. This is often reported to the Board as a gauge of how safe the business is. A low number indicates few incidents and injuries and is assumed to denote a safer workplace.
In Australia, TRIFR is calculated by dividing the total number of recordable injuries (including fatalities, lost time injuries and medical treatment cases) by the total number of hours worked by all employees and then multiplying by one million. This provides a standardised measure of workplace safety, indicating how frequently injuries occur per million hours worked.
Why do Companies use this?
All businesses are required to register reportable injuries. Hence it is a measure that is a necessary matrix and is relatively easy to monitor. In addition, any company that uses a Health and Safety Management System (either manual or electronic) monitors incidents, and most systems will provide a TRIFR report on a monthly basis.
It is also relatively easy to calculate using information that is collected by the business (hours worked and incidents) and can be used as a comparison against competitors as well as the company’s previous months performance.
What are the potential issues with it?
Measuring TRIFR provides a standard comparison on a month-by-month basis, but it leads to issues when striving to make your workplace a safer environment, and more specifically reducing and avoiding serious injuries and fatalities.
Assuming that a low TRIFR means a safer business is misleading.
If too much emphasis is placed on having a low TRIFR score, reporting incidents can become something to be avoided, and managers may blame team members who report incidents for spoiling a good performance or jeopardising an exemplary record. Hence employees may become fearful of reporting incidents and injuries and thus, incidents aren’t reported. This means that lessons which may have led to the workplace becoming safer, are not learnt.
There have been examples where injuries have not been recorded as they occurred towards the end of the working day, and it was deemed to have happened in the employees own time, after work, to ensure that the TRIFR was not impacted.
By not reporting it, there is no opportunity to investigate why it occurred, and to improve processes through the learning of lessons and sharing of those lessons to the wider company.
At Barclayss®, we focus on preventing serious injuries in the workplace and striving for a Fatality Free Future®. This means developing a culture where all employees are risk aware and feel that they have a voice to highlight risks and hazards without fear of negative consequences. Making it easy and encouraging the reporting incidents leads to improvements in processes and greater awareness across the business.
Measuring TRIFR offers no predictability of the future performance and is not showing how to achieve these goals.
As a lag indicator, it only offers a picture of the past performance and doesn’t help in providing methods of improving the instances of serious injuries going forward.
How do you make it effective?
To make your workplace a safer environment:
- Ensure the culture is one of continuous improvement and encourage reporting.
- Focus on measurements to raise risk awareness and promote the methods of defence against injury. Using lead Indicators can help a business reduce the chances of serious injuries and towards a Fatality Free Future.
- Ensure that people don’t feel blamed for errors. Instead see them as an opportunity to learn and improve processes.
- Encourage near miss reporting as well as incidents. Investigate the reasons for every event, even if it is just a team discussion on why it occurred and how to prevent it happening again. A near miss is your free ride – where nobody is hurt, but everybody can learn to ensure there is no repeat of the risk or hazard.
Lead and Lag measurements.
Lead indicators can play a vital role in preventing worker fatalities, injuries, and illnesses and strengthening other safety and health outcomes in the workplace. Lead indicators are proactive and preventive measures that help improve the safety in the workplace. They focus on measuring the defences that are in place and how risks are identified and managed.
Lead indicators
- Prevent workplace injuries and illnesses.
- Reduce costs associated with incidents.
- Improve productivity and overall organisational performance.
- Optimise safety and health performance.
- Raise worker participation.
Examples of lead indicators include website traffic, customer engagement, safety training hours, Risk Awareness methodologies, safety shares in team meetings, near miss reporting, and defect rates. Measuring (and rewarding) positive actions of employees can be a lead indicator that encourages further improvements and a safer workplace.
Lag indicators measure the occurrence and frequency of events that have already occurred.
Examples of lag indicators include attrition rates, revenue performance, sickness/absence records and TRIFR.
While lag indicators can alert you to a failure in an area of your health and safety program or to the existence of a hazard, lead indicators are important because they can tell you whether your health and safety activities are effective at preventing incidents.
A good health and safety program uses lead indicators to drive change and lag indicators to measure effectiveness.
