This study from David Oswald and colleagues provides a summary of the use and abuse of construction safety indicators by way of semi-structured interviews.
First, prior research on lagging indicators was summarised:
1) leading indicators have a reverse relationship and act like lagging
2) measure unsafety more than safety
3) capture things already gone wrong and make it hard to prevent future events
Results:
Interviews revealed that companies & leaders were obsessed with lagging indicators and were continually requesting them.
Also revealed was that both lagging and leading indicators were manipulated to meet targets – particularly when coupled to bonuses.
Indicators often were selected not because of their utility but because of their ease of measurement. Participants said because of the focus on the “clearly measurable”, companies may not be monitoring the things that really drive performance. Despite a focus on the easy to measure stuff, it’s suggested that “the most suitable indicators may be harder to gather, or measure, and for this reason, may be ignored” (p1201).
Discussed is the relationship with lagging indicators coupled with financial rewards. Financial penalties on contractors that didn’t achieve expectations was problematic since it “further encouraged manipulation of statistics to maintain performance” (p1195).
However, leading indicators are also susceptible to manipulation and said to potentially encourage behaviours that increase safety risk. Further, leading indicators were often based on things that people were going to do anyway and therefore would be a ‘successful’ indicator for results. Also reported was that leading indicators may lack innovation and/or may not help improve hazard management.
Indicators usually ‘counted things’ rather than assess the effectiveness. Indeed, indicators focusing on counting things omitted measurements which could evaluate the impact of innovative practices to safety or performance improvements (p1196).
Most indicators focused on unsafety/safety and not worker health hazards.
Authors note that findings indicate that commonly used health and safety indicators in their current use “are subject to manipulation and misinterpretation” (p1188).
It’s argued that because of the shortcomings of commonly used indicators, which don’t reflect the full set of factors affecting workplace safety and performance, great care needs to be used when using them.
Based on another study, the authors argue that the typical “shotgun” approach of action items to address lagging indicator performance may be too superficial and narrow to address the deeper system shortcomings. Moreover, drawing on the previous study’s findings it’s argued that a focus on lagging indicator performance as indicative of “golden numbers” of safety performance is “frustrating for contractors, as they only encompassed negative aspects and do not provide information about why the below expectation performance occurred” (p1203).
Further, additional work is needed to incorporate “indicators of complex cultural aspects that contribute to improved safety performance” (p1195).
Authors: David Oswald, Rita Peihua Zhang, Helen Lingard, Payam Pirzadeh, Tiendung Le
Study link: https://doi.org/10.1108/ECAM-07-2017-0121
Link to the Linkedin article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/use-abuse-safety-indicators-construction-ben-hutchinson
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