Tracking the Right Safety Metrics

All organizations set benchmarks to track their progress in reaching their goals. Measuring the performance of your safety program should be no different.

So, how can administrators gauge your district’s safety performance? Start by carefully considering your safety objectives. What problems are you looking to solve? What areas of your safety program need improvement? Answering these questions will help you to identify the right safety metrics to track.

When you’re ready to target and monitor your safety indicators, we’ve put together the following checklist to help you get started.

Safety Metrics Checklist

1. Identify the top problem areas of your safety program. Start with the hazards that have the greatest risk of harming your staff and students. These should be severe hazards with the greatest likeliness of occurrence.
2. Set a goal. Make an informed decision on what your goal should be and how long it might take to achieve.
   Choose your leading and lagging indicators to track. Choose metrics that can help you to achieve your goal over time.
3. Start gathering data. Begin collecting the leading indicator data for the time period you decided on as well as the data for your goal during that same time period.
4. Periodically assess (and adjust!) your indicators and goals over time. Assemble the results into a graph to determine whether there is a positive relationship between your leading indicator and your goal. Communicate your progress with administrators and employees. Did the actions that you took help you to achieve your goal? If not, think about how you can get on track. OSHA recommends that you customize the type and number of indicators to your needs, resources, and abilities as they evolve over time.

How can Vector EHS Management Software Help?

EHS management software significantly streamlines the collection and analysis of safety data. With Vector EHS, data from ALL safety activities – such as incidents, inspections, reported hazards, and more – can be recorded using standardized forms and stored in a single, centralized location. This enables you to report on uniform data elements and develop common safety metrics for your entire organization. The Vector EHS dashboard also provides access to data, charts, and graphs to save you valuable time and effort in monitoring your metrics.