Health & Safety Inspections and Performance Measurement

Safety Inspections are processes designed to locate and define any faults or causes of accident in the system, operations or equipments of any organization’s department or manufacturing process. These should be carried out regularly and consist of the following steps-

1. Allocating responsibilities for inspections
2. Maintaining a checklist which defines the points to be covered
3. Division of attention to be given to various areas of a plant or department
4. Defining the frequency of inspections- possibly daily in case of critical areas
5. Carrying out random spot checks in accordance with the checklist
6. Carrying out special investigations. Example: Increasing throughput by operating machinery in the absence of guards
7. Setting up a reporting system. Generally forms are used for recording results of inspections
8. Monitoring safety inspections by means of a commitee or otherwise so as to ensure scheduled and corrective action being taken as appropriate.

Performance related to safety measures can be calculated by identifying in good time where actions are necessary. The  most commonly used measures are-

• The Incidence Rate =        ((number of injuries)*(100))/average number of employees in a particular period
• The Frequency Rate =     ((number of injuries)*(100,000))/number of hours worked
• The Severity Rate =           number of days lost due to accidents or  health problems/1,000,000   hours worked
• The Cost Severity Rate =    total cost of accidents/1,000,000 hours

The Cost Severity rate is is used when organizations adopt a ‘total loss control’ approach covering cost of accidents to an organization under headings such as loss of production, damange to machinery or factory, pay to people off from work etc