Free information – Manufacturers given help on monitoring performance

EEF, the manufacturers’ organisation has launched an online health and safety tool to help company leaders monitor their firms’ health and safety performance.

Almost half of all respondents to EEF’s most recent health and safety survey said they would welcome help on setting and monitoring key performance indicators. To address their needs, EEF has introduced a new health and safety scorecard aimed at helping company boards manage health and safety in a pragmatic way.

The scorecard is being made freely available to all EEF member companies in a pilot scheme launched earlier this week. It requires that the board sets measures under four categories: leading indicators; lagging indicators; competence; and process. It’s designed to be flexible so that companies can set the number and type of measures under each category, according to the needs of their risk profile.

If it proves successful it will be made available to all companies later this year.

Steve Pointer, head of health and safety policy at EEF, said: “We believe that this kind of initiative will make a real difference. The tool is loosely based upon the structure of a balanced scorecard. It helps boards set and monitor meaningful targets without the need for them to get into the minutiae. Having identified the key performance indicators, the scorecard shows how to use these to measure and monitor improvements in health and safety performance.”

He added: “We’ve also included worked examples and, with the help of the HSE, data on accident, ill health and absence rates to help them benchmark their performance.”

Leadership of health and safety is a hot topic at present, with companies facing the possibility of being prosecuted for corporate manslaughter, while individuals who are found guilty of health and safety offences can now face prison.

Said Pointer: “Our advisors say managers know they should be doing these things, they just don’t know how.”

The initiative is sponsored by property and casualty insurer, Travelers, and is supported by the HSE, whose chief executive, Geoffrey Podger, commented: “I welcome this work to provide a practical tool for monitoring health and safety performance.

“The tool aims to complement the joint HSE/IoD guidance for directors and board members, ‘Leading Health and Safety at Work’, which calls for senior management to monitor and review health and safety performance. I look forward to hearing how EEF members respond to the pilot.”