What to report in HSE (Incident) statistics

What to report in HSE (Incident) statistics for the management?

First of all, you need to look at the matter from a management perspective, so why not ask, what they are most interested in? Basic figures or some extended info.

Management most probably is usually interested to know how incidents may affect financials as well as reputation. In this case, they need to know the financial impact of the incidents within a given timeframe. Also, they might want to know how many reportable incidents took place that most probably ended in penalties by clients or fines by the government.

Otherwise, an incident report may consist of various parameters that can be used to measure the Health, Safety & Environment parameters of the organization. It is always advisory, to be honest when reporting the stats. One needs to recognize the importance of correct data, which enables the stakeholders to take relevant decisions and prevent reoccurrences &  escalations.

I always advise HSE professionals to be on the guard and protect people, assets, and the environment from wrong decisions and harmful operations. But if they fail, and try to protect their job and salary more than employees, organizations, and the public, then business owners must be vigilant to identify false reports that some ‘experts’ try to present to show how good they are in fulfilling their duties and achieving goals.

Positive Indicators

With that being said, I am pretty sure that even if some incidents take place you are still undertaking a lot of effort to prevent a great deal of other dangerous occurrences that might have taken place should you fail to carry out your responsibilities.
Therefore start and finish with positive indicators, demonstrate that you not just counting incidents in your office, but also manage the whole show and are aware of what is going on in the organization as a whole, what you have done to reduce the severity of the incidents that took place as well as prevented a lot of others, that business & operation people never thought of.

• Participation in BBS program

• New Risk Assessments have taken place or old ones revised

• Compare it to the number of the hazardous operations

• Number of Toolbox Talks

• Number of Inductions or Familiarization

• Training sessions

• New & refreshers combined

• Visits to the sites

• Meetings with stakeholders featuring HSE matters

• Actions raised and closed by the workforce, audits & inspections.

What

• Injury

• Near Miss

• Asset Damage

• Non-Compliance

• Contract breach

• Job-Related Illness

Depending on the industry the company might require reporting certain Lagging KPIs you can find below:

• LTI

• Lost Time Incident number – useful when the absolute figure is required

• MTC

• Medical Treatment Case

• FAC

• First Aid Case

• RTA

• Road Traffic Accident

All of the HSE KPIs above might be reported in a form of frequency as well. Frequency report gives an overview of the particular type of incident in relation to the manhours worked by the involved team. Useful when you have a large number of incidents but if you calculate the frequency against worked manhours it will seem small. To me, sometimes it is used as a trick to deceive the customer or management and create an impression of incident-free & safeguarded operations.

• LTIF

• Lost Time Incident Frequency – useful when incident – manhour ratio is required

• MTCF

• Medical Treatment Case Frequency – useful when incident – manhour ratio is required

• FACF

• First Aid Case Frequency – useful when incident – manhour ratio is required

• RTAT

• Road Traffic Accident Frequency – useful when incident – manhour ratio is required

Who

• Departments

• Provide stats for each of the departments or at least those depts where most of the incidents.

• Injured job title

• Injured demographics

• Age, gender, etc.

• Injured body parts

When

• Dates of months when incidents happen

• Useful when a team works in rotations

• Time of day

• Useful when teams work in shifts

• Time into shift

• Useful when teams work in shifts.

How

• Machines & Equipment

• Involved in the incidents

• Operations

• Undertaking which causes most of the serious or frequent incidents.

• Causation

• Causation, is what causes an incident, an immediate event that caused a harmful event.

Where

• Locations

• Where incident took place