1. Measuring Safety Performance Against Established Objectives

Safety performance is measured against established objectives to evaluate progress towards a healthy and safe workplace.

Time and resources can be wasted when workplace safety and health program activities do not achieve the desired results. The ultimate result of the programs is eliminating unhealthy and unsafe practices and progressing towards a healthy and safe workplace. The best way to measure safety performance is by evaluating actual performance against set targets. Each year activities should be planned with the intention of achieving specific objectives. These objectives, in turn, are geared toward reaching the year's safety and health program goal.

As an example, a company's goal is:

• Develop a comprehensive safety and health program that effectively protects employees by preventing or controlling existing and potential workplace hazards.

To reach this goal, one objective this year is:

• Develop a comprehensive preventive maintenance program.

The company expects that achieving this objective will require more than one year. For the current year the company plans to undertake two activities, each with governing procedures:

• The end-of-year safety and health program evaluation will determine whether these activities were conducted and whether they had the desired effect, i.e., successfully began the process of developing a comprehensive preventive maintenance program.

The evaluation then will examine the value of this objective: did the achievement of this phase of a preventive maintenance program move the company closer to its targeted safety and health goal? If this analysis finds program efforts that are ineffective and do not contribute to the goal, the evaluation should include recommendations for program changes for the next year.

A workplace can have a target such as: eliminating machine injuries by 70%. At evaluation time they will measure the actual monthly reduction percentage against the targeted. This will indicate the success of the safety and health programs.