How do you measure the success of your employee safety programs?

To help businesses track the success of employee safety programs, we asked workplace safety specialists and HR experts this question for their best advice. From conducting safety audits to measuring injury rates, there are several tips that may help you measure the effectiveness of your employee safety program.

Here are nine metrics to use when measuring employee safety programs:

• Conduct Safety Audits
• Review the Bottom Line
• Monitor Recordable Injuries
• Track the Overall Safety Culture
• Calculate Funds Spent in Legal Fees
• Perform Knowledge Checks
• Send Out Safety Surveys
• Check Percentage of Completed Training 
• Measure Injury Rate Reduction

 

Conduct Safety Audits

The success of our employee safety programs hinges on effective communication and easily accessible safety policies. We measure the success of our programs with safety audits. These audits will help us see which procedures are still effective, how our programs are being implemented, and if any part of the policy isn't being followed. If things aren't working out well, this gives us the opportunity to pivot and set up a corrective action plan to make sure that our safety efforts are working just as hard as we are. We want to keep injury rates low and have a healthy and safe working environment.

Henry Babicheknko, Stomadent

 

Review the Bottom Line 

Measuring the success of any safety program can happen at any step. But one way to look at it is by looking at your financial expenses. You'll see the true power of safety training when you look at how much you're spending at the end of the line. If programs are effective, you'll see less money you have to spend in order to fix issues, such as aiding in any personal expenses as a result of an injury. Effective safety culture can help save your bottom line. Looking at how much we're spending on top of training to fix issues helps us determine how successful they are. The less we spend in addition, the better they're working to address safety issues and teach the best practices for our business. 

Randall Smalley II, Cruise America

 

Monitor Recordable Injuries

At MAT Clinics, we are not only concerned with the safety of our patients but also the safety and well-being of our dedicated staff. In our industry, workplace safety is dependent on our compliance with safety rules and policies. We keep track of our company's recordable injuries as part of our measure of success of our safety program. This helps us monitor workplace injuries as well as pinpoint areas in which we can expand our safety efforts.

Dan Reck, MATClinics

 

Track the Overall Safety Culture 

To an outsider, it may seem like a simple solution. To measure the success of a safety initiative, we should take into account any injuries that have occurred since. But in the harsh reality of the business world, the math proves to be much more complex. My firm handles personal injury cases. Most personal injury cases never make it to trial. Although a lawsuit could be considered an absolute measurement against a company’s safety, those assessing such rarely are afforded the luxury. Instead, in addition to tracking incidents, inspections, safety training, and feedback, you can assess your company’s culture of safety by comparing various metrics like hours worked, evaluation pass rates, and inspection scores. Your workplace’s safety culture may be hard to stick a label on, but it’s important to document baseline safety operations to provide a working model for future success.

Alison Pearson, Hal Waldman and Associates

 

Calculate Funds Spent in Legal Fees

We measure the success of our employee safety programs by the amount of money we are saving in litigation fees associated with employee injury lawsuits. Each year we do our program, we see a dramatic decrease in the number of injury lawsuits we have. That is how we measure the success of our employee safety programs.

Craig Carter, Jack Mason

 

Perform Knowledge Checks

We test the knowledge of employees on safety and compare how they were before training. This helps us measure how much they have learned from the training. At the same time, we get to identify the strengths and weaknesses of certain aspects of the training program.

Katherine Brown, Spyic

 

Send Out Safety Surveys

We issue a survey to our production teams to measure the success of our employee safety programs. In this survey, employees write down their thoughts on the programs and score them on a scale of 1-10. Once we get the surveys complete, we compile the score and see where we stand. We use this score against previous years’ scores to determine the success of our employee safety programs.

Jordan Nathan, Caraway

 

Check Percentage of Completed Training

To measure the success of our employee safety programs, we look at the number of training sessions that have been completed. This is a good idea at any company to ensure that your employees have been properly trained, which will pay off for them and the entire company in the future. The most important thing is to have measures in place to protect your employees' safety at all times. If any problems arise in the future, we always keep in mind that our company was motivated by our desire to make a difference. Keeping that in focus will turn any mountain back into a molehill.

Shaun Price, MitoQ

 

Measure Injury Rate Reduction

We conduct effectiveness evaluations to identify how successful our employee safety program is. To conduct these evaluations, we measure the extent to which our safety goals are being met by the programs. For example, we measure the extent to which the injury rate has reduced and compare it with the reduction rate we actually aspired to achieve. The same is true for all the aspects of employee safety that we wish to improve. These metrics give us a clear picture of how well our safety program is working and the things that need further improvement.

Jessica Robinson, The Speaking Polymath