Safety Metrics – Keeping your Cool in a Hot Zone – Four Part Series

Safety metrics is the way we will measure our safety program.   Without measurements we have nothing.

Wikimedia Commons – Btmcclain

Every profession has ways of measuring the success and failure of their endeavors. Accountants, look at balance sheets, earning, and  ( ROI ) return on investment.  The Human Resources Manager will track turnover as well as the cost of recruitment.  Finally, the Safety Director will measure Lost Time injuries, accident frequency, and the companies experience modifier; of course, there are other metrics to consider in Safety and Risk Management.

Throughout my professional life and my personal life, I have always hated bureaucracy or corporate inertia. That is why I have always focused on working with small to mid-sized ( between 10 and 100 employees ) companies. Nevertheless, the following fundamentals will have application for large companies, as well as their smaller cousins.

Let us recall those days of yesteryears, (2019 the big recession) and pretend you have been laid off from your job, along with 200 other persons. It has been six weeks and to date, you have yet to land a job in your chosen field. Your searches filter for, Safety, Claims, Risk, and CSP. One day you notice an ad that reads:

                     Human Resources Generalist needed for midsized company. We are a regional leader in our field, we are 375 employees and growing. XYZ corporation has a sterling reputation in the Field of Civil Engineering. Our Human Resources Dept. needs a self starter who has a strong background in Safety, OSHA Compliance. No prior Human Resources experience needed, as long as you are a Work Comp Claims and Safety Guru. 

A little bit of research and you soon discover that XYZ  (The name has been changed to protect the innocent ) has been in business for twenty years and has had consistent growth for all of that time.Their home office is an easy commute, so you send them a Resume. 

Three days later you are called for an interview. 

As fate would have it the H.R. Manager Fanta Findgold, is very good at choosing twenty karat gold candidates. Before the interview, she gave our intrepid Safety Candidate, Nathanial, a twenty question subject matter exam. On the topics of Work comp claims, Safety and OSHA Compliance.  

Fast Forward, Nate (Nathanial) was selected to be the new company HR Generalist. He was selected because he aced the written exam, and Fanta, liked the fact that he was a CSP Certified Safety Professional. The CFO, who is in charge of  Finance and the Human Resources department sat in on the interview, he was happy to learn that Nate, had been an Insurance Broker, and would be a tremendous asset, in helping with the annual bid process of the Companies insurance portfolio.     

In closing this installment,  Nate was asked the classic, “do you have any questions for us?“  This is what Nate said ……..

Read the answer in our next installment to follow in one week Two at the most.

By Glen DuLac

This blog post is provided by James Moore, AIC, MBA, ChFC, ARM, and is republished with permission from J&L Risk Management Consultants. Visit the full website at www.cutcompcosts.com.

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