What do your safety metrics look at today? How are you using them to improve your processes and make your workplace safer for everyone? EHS metrics can be a useful tool as long as you can use them to directly improve safety in your organization, and you're not simply reporting on them without action.

In a BLR webinar titled "EHS Metrics: How to Measure What Matters Most," Michael D. Lawrence outlined some ways that process improvements and safety improvements are linked. This comes about through the concept of lean management, and the idea of eliminating waste, reducing complexity, and improving process flow – all of which can have positive effects on safety.

By carefully planning processes to minimize safety risks, work can be less hazardous and we can reduce this form of "waste" in terms of reduced accidents and injuries. In the webinar, Lawrence advised: "if we want to incorporate safety into our process and into production plans, this is going to certainly help us to reach the goals that we projected of improved worker health, reduced costs, and increased value. It's a win-win situation, and safety metrics are what can help us get there."

A related article on Lawrence's webinar explains the concept of lean management and its general applicability to safety. Here we discuss seven specific steps Lawrence provided for using lean management to improve safety.

Seven steps to process improvement

There are some steps we can use in improving processes – and thus improving efficiency and safety – in our organizations:

1. Map and measure the process. We need to look at the process and see what is being done, why it is being done, and how well is it being done. We need to determine the impact of each process step on costs, safety, and customer satisfaction. Processes can involve anything in the company, not just manufacturing, maintenance, or procedures used in accounting. You have processes in safety such as accident investigations, hazard identification, and risk assessment. You need to map and measure each of these processes as a step in improving things.
2. Identify the problems experienced by staff, managers, suppliers and customers with the current process. These can be internal and external. Determine what causes frustration and what issues people have with the current process.
3. Identify all waste in the current process. For each waste, ask why it occurs and what could be done to prevent it. The best way to do this is with a group or a team of some sort.
4. Apply the principles of good process design in coming up with the perfect process. Ask yourself how things would things be done if we were not constrained by the process in place now. Ask what would happen if an attempt was made to eliminate every element of waste from the process.
5. Re-introduce reality into what you've come up with as the perfect process. By forcing people to move from perfection back to the best they can do in the real world makes people think differently. They challenge preconceptions more and end up with a better solution. Keep introducing realism into your perfect process until arriving at a process that can be implemented now.
6. Involve staff in planning the change process and ensure the resources are in place to move from the current process to the improved process. Do what you say you are going to do and don’t allow critics to derail your process.
7. Put in place effective process measures and make it the responsibility of the team and line management to monitor the new or modified process and continue to make changes to process based on the performance observed in terms of safety metrics or other appropriate metrics in terms of efficiency.

Following these steps will lead you to more efficient, safer processes. Better for employees, and better for your bottom line.

The above information is excerpted in part from a BLR webinar titled "EHS Metrics: How to Measure What Matters Most," with expert Michael D. Lawrence of Summit Safety Technologies. For more information on EHS metrics, order the webinar recording. To register for a future webinar, visit http://catalog.blr.com/audio.

Michael D. Lawrence is the Principal Consultant and founder of the firm Summit Safety Technologies in Long Beach, California. (www.SafetyProgramNow.com) Michael is an accomplished safety manager with expertise in all areas of workplace safety, and is certified both in safety and health management systems for small business and also as a performance-based equipment trainer.