From my observation, there are a few criteria that always appear in those management assessments (i.e. environmental, quality, SHE):

• the existence of a management plan
• the commitment of the top management
• the awareness of the staff
• the competency of the staff
• training of the staff
• documentation
• emergency preparedness plan
• inspection plan
• record of incident/accident 

Important Health & Safety Management Indicators

• Zero fatality
• Adherence to Protection against any major accident
• Minor accidents & incidents within a particular area of control.
• Accidents & incidents are reported / logged in good time to enable investigations to be made.
• Protection and coverage against sickness / disablement / loss of earning capacity.
• Compensation & insurance
• Wholesome coverage to all employees

The above list is not sequentially arranged and only illustrative.

Dear Ana María Negrón González

Greetings,

I think the effective management can explain the cooperation between employees , insurance and risk a versa , social responsibility of work , talent of employee , technology advance , quality of services and training of staff.

Best Regards

Excellent answers! I can only add that safety drills should done and all employees must demonstrate their ability to read and understand the health and safety regulations. Where the latter shows some gaps, the employer should make every effort that these are closed for the overall health and safety of the organisation.

Best regards,

Debra

Greetings Ana,

These are the types of indicators most commonly used in Colombia to determine the management of Health and Safety at Work.

Compliance Indicators

COVERAGE INDICATORS.

QUALITY INDICATORS.

IMPACT INDICATORS

RESULT INDICATORS

Dear Chee hung Foo:

Greetings,

Thank you very much for the information

Best regards

Ana María Negrón González

As you can see each author proposes a set of indicators. I totally agree with them. But I suggest that you review the WHO reports.

Improve the performance of health systems (2000)

Reduce the risks and Promoting Healthy Life (2002)

Working Together for Health (2006)

The primary health care more necessary than ever (2008)

These 4 reports allow you to reach conclusions and define witch indicators you need to evaluate good hospital practices, according to the conditions and requirement  of your territory.

Dear Krishnan Umachandran

Greetings,

Thank you very much for the information

These indicators are very objectives

Best regards,

Ana María

Dear Faris Alshubiri

Greetings,

Thank you very much for the information

Best regards,

Ana María

Dear Debra Sharon Ferdinand

Greetings,

This information seems very important, especially the role it should play accident prevention in enterprises

Best regards,

Ana María

Dear Carlos Julio

Thank you very much for the information

Greetings,

Best regards,

Ana María

Hi Ana Maria,

One indicator is  known as precursors which means near miss events. Events which  have happened but didn't lead to injuries indicate a fault in the system which must be remedied.  By collecting near miss events and eliminating/controlling their cause a large number of possible accidents can be eliminated or the safety managers  can be ready for them. 

Generally people take near miss event as the strength of a system, since no injuries followed hence the safety system is fine. However, near miss accident is a sign of weakness and to shear luck it did not lead to injuries.  

UK Health and Safety Executive has developed a process safety performance

Indicators which is  a step by step guideline.

http://webcommunities.hse.gov.uk/ui/inovem.ti/group/chemicalindustries.pspm/grouphome

and

http://www.ogp.org.uk/pubs/2012s.pdf

extensive application of ergonomics to higher productivity and low physiological cost as standards,zero accident rate is standards for safety,vvery good o excellent physical finess is standards of health pcg,chennai

I approach it from a different perspective and look at how the business itself is managed. This begins with establishing what the company is in business for and how these objectives are to be achieved.

In the first instance there are three parties to the business, each of which have their own objectives that are to be satisfied, but all of whom share one same objective, namely that the  business is sustainable.

Those who own the business, those who are employed in the business (and in some cases they may be the same as the owners) and the community in which the business is set. All look for economic success and, to a greater or lesser extent, each wants to satisfy social need and all seek sustainability. Thus economic success, social need and sustainability are key objectives and the business must be managed to attain these, generally regardless of what the business produces. The first set of performance indicators would then be established around these objectives.

Respect is a critical factor in human relations and where it is lacking conflict arises that manifests itself in many different types of negative behaviours. Businesses succeed because of those who work in them and produce the goods.  Successful businesses ensure that those who work in the company are competent.  Those businesses who understand and respect competence facilitate and support worker and work team agency, recognising that these teams of competent workers can produce the goods and make decisions about processes, quality and safety. Thus a second set of performance indicators would be based on the degree of agency afforded workers and the resources provided by the company to facilitate the exercise of competent judgements and decision making. 

Traditional approaches to health and safety at work treat it as an adjunct to the whole process of work rather than seeing it as the output competent work and decision making.  By holistically managing the business and the work activities (whether by professional managers or by self-managing work teams) everything is managed in context and with the input of all stakeholders, and good health and safety is a natural consequence of the process.

Dear Sirous Yasseri

Thank you very much for the information

Best regards,

Ana María

Dear Ana Maria,

I agree with comments made so far.  Something additional that may be implied by prior comments, but not explicitly stated as far as I can see is "safety culture".  It is my belief that "safety culture" precedes many of the good outcomes in regard to safety indicators mentioned so far.

In the most recent book by David Goetsch, Occupational Safety and Health for Technologists, Engineers and Managers (8th Ed. 2015 and 7th, Ed. 2011), a whole chapter is devoted to this topic. In section 5 of the book on "Management of Safety and Health", Goetsch finishes the section with the chapter (ch.31) titled "Establishing a Safety-First Corporate Culture". When I have taught "Safety Engineering" IE558 the two most recent times in 2013 and 2015, I began the course with this topic.

Goetsch introduces the topic by stating "Safety-related disasters that have occurred over time,...have given rise to the term safety culture. This term is often heard now when something major goes wrong relating to occupational safety and health."  Interestingly, though Goetsch has written a separate book on the topic, in his other book titled "The Basics of Occupational Safety and Health", he doesn't include that chapter. It is my opinion that the reason it is not included is because there isn't a section on "Management" in that book about "The basics".

Since you asked about effective management, I'm including it here because of, especially, those incidents referred to by Goetsch in a compelling way in his chapter that outlines these management-related topics that I believe are early indicators of those safety-related outcomes already mentioned by other colleagues.  "Safety culture" doesn't have the same more direct and objective measures as other indicators in industrial settings, but can be assessed through subjective measures.

Guldenmund (2000), for instance, makes a distinction between "safety culture" and "safety climate" when reviewing "social psychology and "organizational psychology" literature and concludes "...safety climate might be considered an alternative safety performance indicator...". The citation from the journal titled "Safety Science" is included below for your additional information.

Citation: Guldenmund, Frank W. "The nature of safety culture: a review of theory and research." Safety science 34, no. 1 (2000): 215-257.  

Goetsch's chapter (ch.31) gives a good method for how to develop an effective "safety-first" corporate culture as a path toward other successful outcomes that have some overlap with Quality Management. The citations for two of Goetsch's books are also included here:

Additional references:

Goetsch, David L. "Establishing a safety-first corporate culture in your organization: An integrated approach for safety professionals and safety committees." Prentice Hall, 2009.

Goetsch, David L. "Occupational Safety and Health for Technologists, Engineers, and Managers." Pearson/Prentice-Hall (2011; 2015).

Hope this helps for now.

Best regards,

Vincent

Dear Vincent,

Greetings,

The information sent is very interesting and I agree with you on several of the points. You call it "culture of safety" and we in Cuba and several Latin American countries is prevention of occupational hazards, see very coherent, because the end result is a "safety culture" but the safety and health at work.

Thank you for taking time and thank you very much for this is very interesting information

Thank you so much

Best regards,

Ana María

These responses have been very informative to me too. Thank you all

There are a large number of issues that must be addressed when assessing the adequacy of health and safety arrangements. These are comprehensively covered in the free universal standard http://www.thecqi.org/PageFiles/3408/MSS%201000-2014%20Management%20System%20Standard(FINAL).pdf

You might examine the ANSI/AIHA Z10 Standard for Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems for these indicators.  Fred Manuele has published a book, which summarizes the standard and addresses methods to evaluate and assess safety management programs and practices.  A reference for his text is below.

Manuele, F.A. (2014). Advanced safety management: Focusing on Z10 and serious injury prevention (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

There are two main types of HSE indicators, leading and lagging indicators.

The leading indicators include quantifying measurements of activities such as site and office HSE inspections, HSE Orientation, HSE training, job observations, and Joint H&S Committee meetings. These activities help promote a culture of health and safety, and provide awareness to help reduce the number of incidents.

The lagging indicators are those statistics that are intended to track where gaps in the HSE Program have occurred, and include near misses and incidents. These measures are considered a reactive measure and only consider incidents after they have occurred.

Dear Ana María Negrón González

Greetings,

I think one more parameter of "availability of the safety staff i.e safety engineer/officer" may be added to parameters told by Chee hung Foo.

Best Regards,

Gopang

Hi Ana

A good set of safety indicators should take into consideration specific features of the industry/organisation you intend to evaluate. Roland Roy’s observation about leading and lagging indicators is also extremely important.

As you might want to be proactive and try to anticipate undesirable events, you should keep your focus on the definition of indirect measurements, which would give indication of the performance of the safety management system. This way, you will be able to improve the safety system before incidents and accidents occur.

I would add to the excellent discussion and thoughtful answers the importance of distinguishing “health” from “safety”, or personal safety (occupational health accidents) from process safety. Slips, trips and falls are considered to be individual accidents, and the associated indicators cannot be mixed with process safety indicators, regardless of the consequence (e.g. a fatality). In addition, it is widely accepted that occupational health indicators cannot give much insight into the safety status of the process plant.

Thus, you will need to define process safety indicators, in order to manage major hazards properly.

To summarise my observations:

1) your indicators will depend on the industry/group of facilities or facility you intend to evaluate;

2) use lagging indicators to recognise your past performance, and leading indicators to disclose early warnings and improve the safety management system; and

3) Separate indicators intended to measure individual accidents from the ones intended to measure the safety of the process (and prevent major accidents).

The UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has a relatively old publication entitled 'A Guide to Measuring H&S Performance' - it can be found at http://www.hse.gov.uk/opsunit/perfmeas.pdf. This may be of some help to you.

Less detailed information can be found at http://www.hse.gov.uk/managing/delivering/check/measuring-performance.htm.

The document found here - http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/crr_pdf/2000/crr00309.pdf - may also be of benefit to you.

There is also the safety management assessment tool found here - http://www.hse.gov.uk/paper/safetymanagement.pdf.

Hope this helps.

Besides the basic OSH indicators such as the number/rate of accidents, number/rate of death, number/rate of injuries, severity of injuries, number of near-misses.

The employer may also look into direct / indirect cost related to workers turnover, psychology aspects of job satisfaction, etc.

leading and lagging indicators as explained by Roy. Besides what you measure also depends on your company objectives and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Hi Ana,

People devised many indicators which  work to some extent provided such accident has have happened in the past. 

A better indicator is known as the "Precursor events". This  means events  which has happend but did not go that far to be recorded as an accident.. Precursors tell you how robust the safety system is. If there are too many of them , then there is a problem.

Some mistakenly take precursors as the strength of a system, because such events did not lead to accidents. They ignore the element of luck and perhaps you need  a few of precursor events to breach the defenses. 

One can assure the safety system robustness by collecting precursors, analyzing them regularly and determine why there were no accident. Alternatively how to prevent such events. By this you can strengthen your layers of protection(known as lines of defense in the UK).

Google "precursor" and find more. 

Dear Ana, according to my personal experience and opinion for effective OHS management hazardous event investigation and reporting strategies play an most important role.Because if you have sufficient investigation strategies and planing for dealing with unpredictable hazardous event then you can implement effective controls for managing them. Better to use it as OHS effective management "contributor" rather then indicator.

All the best.

Important safety management indicators

Mortality rate

injury rate,

continuous training in health and safety

Pre plan

Hi Ana Maria,

There are many sources you could consult, including the US OSH Act, the UK Health and Safety at work Act (as well as several resources on hse.gov.uk), and the ILO's Guidelines on Occupational Safety and Health Management Systems (ILO-OSH 2001), which are available at http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_protect/---protrav/---safework/documents/publication/wcms_110496.pdf .

Also, I recently did some work surveying and try to determine how to cluster elements influencing OSHMS development. You can check out the paper, including some literature and the outcomes from principal components analysis based on the survey in the publication included with this response.

I hope these suggestions are useful.

Marcia

Article Factor Analysis of Elements Influencing Occupational Safety ...

Hi Ana Maria,

You will find some literature and other findings related to your question in some of the other papers coming out of our project on OSH management system evaluation and development. I think you will find some useful content in the linked papers below.

Conference Paper Development of a Compliance Framework for safety management ...

Article Occupational Safety and Health Management System Implementat...

Article OSH at Trinidad and Tobago's Fingertips: Learning from First...

Article Towards Compliance with the OSH Act of Trinidad and Tobago: ...

Dear Marcia Nathai-Balkissoon:

Thank you very much.

Best Regards,

Ana María

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/flash/fl_398_en.pdf

I think one more parameter of "availability of the safety staff i.e safety engineer/officer" may be added to parameters told by Chee hung Foo.

Thank you very much for your contributions.

Best Regards

We have some publications that can help you.

Article Development of a Preliminary Model for Evaluating Occupation...

Article A novel tool for evaluating occupational health and safety p...

Article Assessment of occupational health and safety performance eva...

Dear Sir better indicators of successful OSH program is higher productivity, low accident rate, higher endurance time

hi

We should always consider 2 type of indicators (leading and lagging indicators),

You should performance measurement base on the industry’s status and internal requirements. combination of the two types of indicators in performance assessment can help overcome the constraints of each type .

There should be a health and safety management plan which spells out some key indicators

Following indicators should be taken into account in assessing the effective management of Health and Safety at Work :

Some of the factors can also be assessed for effective management of Health &Safety-

yes effective house keeping, work place hyzine helps in increaseing endurance time there by higher productivity.