Safety Metrics, Audits and Leading Indicators

How to measure, audit and report safety performance beyond injury counts, followed through the invented Harrowgate Foods as it rebuilds its safety reporting across its plants and distribution center in Georgia: why measure and Goodhart's law, calculating TRIR, DART and severity rates under OSHA's recordkeeping criteria, the limits and side effects of lagging indicators and reporting health ratios, leading indicators, SIF potential and critical controls, writing indicator specifications with thresholds and paired indicators, inspections that find high-risk hazards, internal, management system and certification audits under ISO 19011, audit sampling, evidence and findings, OSHA 300, 301 and 300A records and electronic submission, Poisson confidence intervals and u-charts, and dashboards and board reporting with directors' oversight duties, with a capstone metrics and audit framework.

HSE-407 12 lessons · 4 h ▶ Video lessons coming soon

Offered by HSM University · Safety Training

This is the American version of this course. See the Canadian version.

What you'll learn

  • Explain the purposes of safety performance measurement and where monitoring, measurement and audit sit in a safety management system.
  • Calculate TRIR, DART, DAFW and severity rates correctly under OSHA's recordkeeping criteria, with consistent counting of days and hours worked.
  • Describe the limits of lagging indicators, recognize practices that suppress reporting, and use reporting health ratios to detect them.
  • Classify events by serious injury and fatality potential and select leading indicators for precursors and critical controls.
  • Write indicator specifications with operational definitions, thresholds, responses and paired indicators, and test indicators against outcomes.
  • Design inspection routes and forms that find high-risk hazards, and measure inspection quality, closure and repeat findings.
  • Distinguish compliance, management system and topic audits and first-, second- and third-party audits, and build a risk-based audit program under ISO 19011 principles.
  • Gather triangulated audit evidence, calculate attribute sample sizes, and write and grade audit findings through to verified corrective action.
  • Keep OSHA 300, 301 and 300A records and meet electronic submission duties, and apply data quality checks, classification review and reconciliation.
  • Calculate Poisson confidence intervals for injury rates and build and interpret u-charts with signal rules.
  • Design tiered dashboards and board reports with defined status colors, commentary and decisions, and explain directors' oversight duties.
  • Assemble and review a complete safety metrics and audit framework centered on serious hazards and critical controls.

Course content

12 lessons · 4 h total · final exam

  1. 1 Why measure safety performance 22 min · quiz
  2. 2 Lagging indicators: rates and how to calculate them 20 min · quiz
  3. 3 The limits and side effects of lagging indicators 20 min · quiz
  4. 4 Leading indicators and serious injury precursors 20 min · quiz
  5. 5 Designing indicators that work 20 min · quiz
  6. 6 Inspections that find hazards 20 min · quiz
  7. 7 Safety audits: internal, management system and certification audits 20 min · quiz
  8. 8 Audit sampling, evidence and findings 19 min · quiz
  9. 9 Data quality and recordkeeping 20 min · quiz
  10. 10 Statistics and control charts for safety data 19 min · quiz
  11. 11 Dashboards and reporting to leadership and the board 20 min · quiz
  12. 12 Capstone: a metrics and audit framework for Harrowgate 20 min · quiz
  13. E Final exam 20 questions

Requirements

Recommended background. You can start any course at any time.

Description

How to measure, audit and report safety performance beyond injury counts, followed through the invented Harrowgate Foods as it rebuilds its safety reporting across its plants and distribution center in Georgia: why measure and Goodhart's law, calculating TRIR, DART and severity rates under OSHA's recordkeeping criteria, the limits and side effects of lagging indicators and reporting health ratios, leading indicators, SIF potential and critical controls, writing indicator specifications with thresholds and paired indicators, inspections that find high-risk hazards, internal, management system and certification audits under ISO 19011, audit sampling, evidence and findings, OSHA 300, 301 and 300A records and electronic submission, Poisson confidence intervals and u-charts, and dashboards and board reporting with directors' oversight duties, with a capstone metrics and audit framework.