Stay Safe by Adopting a Comprehensive Outlook
If your company operates like most, your approach to safety relies heavily on lagging indicators ― like safety metrics that tell you how many injuries you’ve had in the past year. Those indicators provide critical, actionable information after an event, allowing you to measure trends and take corrective steps to prevent future events. But because they are a reactive, not proactive, approach, lagging indicators aren’t nearly enough when it comes to comprehensive safety planning.
The strongest safety plans combine lagging indicators with leading indicators. Leading indicators allow you to identify risks in advance and take proactive safety measures to reduce hazard exposure. For example, if you conduct regular safety audits and your safety grade drops, you know you are missing something. You need to take a closer look ― and take the actions necessary to head off a potential event.
UG2’s Comprehensive Approach
UG2 incorporates both leading and lagging indicators into our planning for a comprehensive approach to safety that’s woven into all we do. From our USafe2 health and safety program to our industry-leading efforts around quality control, we’ve consistently attained an above-average safety rating that stands out from that of our competitors.
We understand that a successful health and safety program closely monitors and responds to lagging indicators like lost workdays, injuries, and asset damage, while also valuing leading indicators — from ergonomics and unsafe/safe conditions to inspection and training completion reports and chemical management.
The People Behind the Processes
Our proactive approach to safety planning emphasizes safety training and refreshers for the individuals who make up our workforce at every level. We track safety trainings and third-party certifications completed. We reinforce best practices by recognizing and rewarding safe behavior. And we pay close attention to employee turnover ― which can serve as both a lagging and leading indicator.
Comprehensive safety planning also accounts for human behavior. We know from studies of human behavior how difficult it is to change ingrained habits. It’s human nature to want to take shortcuts ― like arriving on the 13th floor to change a light ballast, realizing you forgot your safety glasses and resisting going back for them because of the extra time and effort it will take. Or failing to ask for help lifting something heavy because it will be quicker to just do it yourself. But shortcuts and safety don’t mix.
Leading indicators can help us counter the habits that make us fallible and reinforce practices and processes that keep everyone safe. That means accounting for observed behaviors, for example, the percentage of people wearing hard hats on a building site.
Inspections, audits and surveys should include leader audits and self-inspections, risk and hazard assessments, permit to work audits, and job safety analysis (JSA) audits. In fact, every site visit should include a documented safety audit.
Safety means incorporating hazard mitigation into every interaction, making safety a part of every person’s job description and day-to-day activities.