What type of graphs would I use for the above scenarios? Thank you. Sharon

1) I agree that some kind of accident ratio is in order. Per mile driven? Per trip taken? Seems like there is a SS measure of “opportunities for error” measure there. 0 sounds like a great goal, but there is some context. If that’s your goal and you’re a roofing contractor, you are always staring at evidence of your failure even though you might be smashing the industry average. If you operate an insurance claims office and you’re seeing 5 accidents per year among your adjusters, you really are failing.

2) Safety theory (whatever that may be) suggests that for every bad accident, there are X minor ones and Y near hits. I have seen encouragement to keep track of all of the misses as well as the hits. Maybe overkill? Still, whenever you’re measuring teeny little numbers, you aren’t measuring anything useful. I have a sore spot on this because my mgt sometimes looks past my months on end with no injuries, then we have a spate of unrelated things, and they say, “3 last year, 6 this year – your injury rates have doubled!” Yes, random variation looks bad when you put it like that.

In the end, I prefer to keep things real simple. Also, I think we all need to be careful with tracking too many things since this often leads to analysis paralysis. In other words, we spend more time making graphs than focusing on how to make the work place safer and more effective.

Thanks for the comment!

What type of approach would you take to display your safety information when you have multiple accidents in one day and you are also keeping track of multiple safety categories, i.e. near misses, first aids, recordable injuries, lost time injuries, cumulative total recordable injuries (recordable + lost time) and hours worked for the month?

Here is a examlple of how we publish our safety data:

Month First Aids Rec. InjuryLost Time Total Rec Cum. TRI Hrs Worked
1/5/08 12 2 0 2 5.15 388326
2/5/08 14 0 0 0 2.69 353885
3/5/08 14 1 1 2 3.48 408362
4/5/08 8 0 1 1 3.22 400591
5/5/08 10 3 0 3 4.09 405722
6/5/08 19 1 1 2 4.15 453344
7/5/08 9 0 1 1 3.9 409834

I am not sure I completely agree on the first point about people trying to normalize are attempting to twist data. Truth be told, I am not a big fan of normalizing data but will admit there are some situations where it is valid and makes sense.

With this said, I do agree that 0 accidents should always be our goal no matter the size or complexity of the business.

Hi Jason, you bring up some valid points, especially the hours worked aspect. With this said, an accident is an accident and just because more “hours” were worked doesn’t mean we should accept more accidents or try to “normalize” them away. Finally, I think my approach is probably best suited as a plant level metric and not necessarily a “division” level metric for the very reasons you noted. Great comment, as usual.

Something like accidents/hours worked would be a better measurement and allow for “normalizing” if hours significantly increased – say through an acquisition or some such.