Developing an Effective Health and Safety Program: Step 3: Tracking Trends & Effectiveness

Once you’ve established a workplace health and safety program, it needs to be consistently monitored and evaluated in order to verify its effectiveness. If you’ve followed our previous steps, you have defined clear, measurable goals for your program. It is important to periodically check your progress and determine what’s working and what isn’t.

The first step in tracking your program’s effectiveness is to identify relevant indicators of progress.

These indicators will help you determine whether or not your program is acheiving its set goals:

  • -Number of injuries and illnesses
  • -Severity of injuries and illnesses
  • -Workers’ compensation data (number of claims/cost)
  • -Employee time-off for illness

These indicators will help you identify how your program is being implemented:

  • -Employee participation in program activities
  • -Number of employee safety suggestions
  • -Number of employee-reported hazards/ near misses
  • -Amount of time taken to respond to reports
  • -Number and frequency of inspections by management
  • -Number and severity of hazards identified during inspections
  • -Employee responses to safety surveys

As you begin to check up on these indicators periodically, you should be able to connect items from each list. For example, as the number of employee safety suggestions increases, the number of injuries should decrease. If the injury rate is not decreasing, it would indicate that there is something wrong with the way the program is being implemented. Perhaps employee safety suggestions aren’t being responded to in a timely manner, or they aren’t being used to make real procedural adjustments.

Use this process to verify that your program is being properly implemented and that it is working towards its goals. Evaluate your progress over time and identify weak points in your program so that adjustments can be made. Involve your employees in the evaluation process. Encourage worker input; when you see that goals aren’t being reached, ask your employees for suggestions to improve the program.

If you need guidance to make your workplace healthier, safer, and more productive, contact United Alliance Services today. We offer workplace health and safety training for both workers and management in a variety of industries. We can help you develop an effective program and give you specific steps for tracking progress. Learn more here: https://unitedallianceservices.com/safety-training/

Read the previous Steps:

Step 1: Developing an Effective Health and Safety Program: Step 1: Leadership

Step: Developing an Effective Health and Safety Program: Step 2: Communication and Awareness