Purpose of the Health and Safety Monitoring

Purpose of Health and Safety Monitoring👈

Monitoring something is part of the routine life to ensure the subject task or activity is being performed as per the requirement so that any mistake is identified, and corrected so that the correct product is delivered. 

Health and Safety performance measurement is a cardinal part of the management system of an organization. Checking that risk is being managed, and correct standards are implemented to meet the legal requirements is mandatory.

In occupational industries, many incidents take place of the various types and severity which can harm the worker, the production, and impact the environment leading to the severe consequences. Hence it is mandatory for an organization engaged in an activity to monitor the respective health and safety performance to ensure;

1. Implemented health and safety objectives and standards are effective in terms of both;
• Hardware - Plant, Machinery, Tools, Equipment
• Software - Procedure, Methods, People
2. Identification of loopholes and mistakes in the management system;
3. Use identified loopholes as a basis for making improvement recommendations;
4. Maintaining and improvement of the health and safety management system performance;

Benefits of Performance Measurements

Measuring health and safety performance provides information on the progress and current status of the strategies, processes, and activities used by an organization to control risks to health and safety. It sustains the operation and development of the health and safety management system, and the control of risk, by;

1. Providing information on management system practice in the operational phase;
2. Assistance in identifying the areas where remedial
3.  action is necessary;
4. Providing a basis for continual improvement with the passage of time;
5. Provision of feedback and motivation;

Monitoring Methods

Performance Monitoring requires a combination of ACTIVE & REACTIVE measures to assess whether the health and safety objectives have been met as required. The OBJECTIVES of both measures are listed below.

Active Monitoring

Reactive Monitoring

The objective of the active monitoring is to ensure; Health and safety plans have been implemented to measure the compliance extent; The organization's systems and procedures are effective; Legislation and technical standards are being complied with; Active Monitoring is performed before something goes wrong, by identifying the non-compliance so that timely measures are adapted and corrections are made.

Reactive Monitoring is performed in response to incidents that have taken place due to various factors. The following data is analyzed in this phase; Ill-health Accidents Other loss-causing events Fines and Warning gave by the govt.; Any other factors which degrade the system It must be remembered that it is better to identify the problem and correct it before something wrong happens, rather than waiting for an event to occur to highlight any sort of shortcomings in the system.

Distinct Between Performance Measures

• Active vs Reactive

Active Monitoring

Active Measure means before something wrong happens. It must be remembered that correcting things by looking at them before something goes wrong is not an easy task, but the law requires the things to be corrected before something happens wrong. Hence, the risk is controlled and reduced to the minimum tolerable level through the Risk Assessment so that legal requirement is fulfilled.

Reactive Monitoring

Reactive Monitoring is performed when something has gone wrong so that the root causes are identified, appropriate measures are adopted, and implemented to the maximum level to prevent the recurrence.

Note: As mentioned above, to correct something, you don't have to wait for it to go wrong, and shortcomings should be corrected timely.

• Objective vs Subjective

Objective

Objective means that it is not associated with the PERSONAL JUDGEMENT of anyone, e.g., any question in the audit can be asked which is not subject to personal judgment as mentioned below;

How many enforcement notices have been issued to the organization by the legislative body in the last 12-months?

Subjective

Subjective means the judgment is associated with someone's personal judgment, and in return, the person will influence the outcome of the judgment., e.g.,

Is the housekeeping is sufficient?

In this situation where standards are not defined, different auditors will give a different response. 

•  Qualitative vs Quantitative

Qualitative

The data used in the qualitative measure is not presented numerically e.g., reports, and commentaries, which are useful but difficult to use as an accurate measure.

Quantitative

The data employed in the quantitative measure is presented in the numerical form e.g., accidents that occurred at the workplace are represented in numbers. Additional examples of quantitative data are;

• Ill-health Data
• Audits
• Inspections
• Safety Tours
• Behavioral Measures
• Safety Surveys
• Training
• Emergency Drills
• Benchmarking

References

1. Managing Health and Safety Performance - HSE UK