Wrong Turn?

Midsummer, a long languid day for reflection and celebration or if you are inclined, a bonfire or two and some dancing! June also marks the halfway point in the year, an ideal time to take stock, look back at the achievements so far and ask ourselves; how are we doing or have we taken an unexpected and unwelcome detour?

Earlier in the year we blogged about the perils of reactive monitoring and hopefully you have been measuring proactive performance indicators for the first six months of the year. Maybe you have some results to really start sinking your teeth into but we also know that sometimes finding that proactive monitoring gold is harder than it looks, so here are some of our top tips on where to go mining;

Look for meaningful measurements, rather than just measuring the number of people attending training sessions, observe them applying learnings through job safety observation.

Look for relevant measurements, it’s nice to know how many audits you are completing but your employees are unlikely to feel this in real terms, ask them what they want to know about audit information, is it more important to them that they are receiving communications about completed audit actions or corrective measures?

Look for direct feedback, regular dialogue about safety matters can be recorded very simply with smart phone apps, intranet forums and at its simplest level, whiteboards. Try asking employees to volunteer a few key areas for discussion every month, then simply log the number of meaningful discussions taking place against these.

Not forgetting the first two tips, you may then look at whether the lowest representation indicates a lack of awareness or merely satisfaction, then take it from there.

Some of the results may help you to highlight where there are negative cultural traits shoring up bad practice and preventing your performance from improving, it is an exploration so don’t be too deflated if you hit a dead end or make a wrong turn, just keep in mind, there’s gold in them thar hills!