Safety Metrics, Keeping your Cool in a Hot Zone – The Safety Lunch
Safety metrics is the way we will measure our safety program. Without measurements we have nothing.
On our third install we will follow Nate and Fanta out to lunch.
Fanta ) “ So Nate what kind of foods do you like. “
Nate ) “ Oh, almost anything. I especially like hot and spicy.”
Fanta ) “ How about Mexican ? “
Nate ) “ You read my mind.”
Fanta ) “ You know the old expression, ‘ great minds think alike.”
Nate and Fanta arrive at the restaurant in about ten minutes. They are seated quickly. Imagine being a fly on the wall. Fanta is asking questions and Nate is dominating the conversation with answers, which he punctuates with chips and salsa.
Nate ) In my opinion, one of the most important numbers or statistics that can be used to track our progress would be OSHA’s incident rates. “
This author, taking the role of the fly on the wall will give a brief synopsis of the jargon Nate is spewing, between his tacos and burrito.
The key to the OSHA Recordable Injury and Illness rate is a constant of 200,000 hours. This translates to 100 employees working full time. With this number a 12 man shop, can compare its safety record to a similar company with 12,000 employees.
R.I.I.R = Number of recordable times 200,000/ Number of actual work hours
Nate ) “But without knowing what our claims were last year, we can not calculate the rate. “
Fanta ) “ lets use an imaginary claims number so I can see how it works. We have 375 employees, all full time. So that is 750,000 hour.”
Nate ) “ O.K. lets say we had 50 recordable. It would look like this.”
50 recordable times 200,000 / 750,000 hours worked = 13.33
Nate ) “ then we look at the SIC Standard industrial codes to see how our rate compares with other companies that are in our same field.
Beep, plunk, Fanta and Nate both get texts from Mr. Mony.
Nate ) “Thank you for lunch. It was really good. Next time, let me buy you lunch.”
Fanta ) “ Anytime you want, in fact why don’t you take me out for dinner. “
What was the text from Mr. Mony we will answer that in our fourth installment.
As for the food establishment, they may lose their four star rating. Waiter there is a fly on the wall, hurry and bring me a fly swatter.”
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2 Responses
No one can look at a SIC code anymore; you need to know your NAICS code and look it up. It’s been over a decade since the changeover.
Brian, You are correct. The article was taken from one of our OSHA consultant’s old articles. We made the change to the article. Thanks for the heads up.