Safety metrics and reports “make no contribution to proving the effectiveness of our crucial systems” – Paper Safe, Greg Smith

A few apt extracts from Greg Smith’s excellent ‘Paper Safe’.

If you’ve not yet read this or Proving Safety, then do yourself the favour.

Greg argues:

· Many indicators in use are measures of activity and usually tell us something has been done

· But, “They tell us nothing about the quality or effectiveness of the activity”

· “They tell us nothing about the influence of the activity on safety”

· “They make no contribution to proving the effectiveness of our crucial systems”

· JHAs can also be problematic – “becoming a bureaucratic process … as it reports on activity (i.e. process) not whether the process is effective (i.e. purpose)”

· Workers may see frontline risk assessment tools as a “backside covering exercise, designed to protect managers from legal risk”

· He talks about never seeing a safety report that “provides information to the executive about the effectiveness of the JHA system in the business”

· “When was the last time anybody provided … safety reporting that made a meaningful contribution to proving the effectiveness of crucial systems?”

· “Have any leaders ever received a report showing a detailed analysis of lifting operations over a 10-month period with a formal, concluded view about the effectiveness of the [SMS] to control the risks”?

· He suggests the following at the next H&S reporting meeting: “…pick a critical risk such as working at heights, and ask your safety manager to provide you with a presentation about whether, or to what extent, the risk has been managed [SFAIRP]”

· “What is your health and safety reporting really telling you, as opposed to the assumptions you choose to make? Is there any evidence that it is proving the effectiveness of your crucial systems?”