Improve health and safety capability, culture, performance and engagement and reduce workplace injury rates.

Nathan Hight, Co-Founder Safe365®

As the saying goes, ‘a fence at the top of the cliff is better than an ambulance at the bottom’. In the context of work health, safety & well-being, quantitative evidence is increasing to underpin the relationship between a higher Safe365 Safety Index™ (an indicator of business health and safety maturity) and reduced rates of harm to workers.

Look at the data

When two large ‘higher risk’ industries; construction and energy are compared, Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) and WorkSafe New Zealand data shows significant variation in worker harm rates between the industries in terms of fatalities, lost time injuries, incidents and reported unsafe work conditions.

Safe365® measured the health and safety maturity of businesses operating in the same industry verticals using 84 elements across leadership, risk management, engagement, training, culture and systems related to legislation and ISO45001 best practice, to show a differential in maturity, expressed using the Safe365® Safety Index™ across the same two industries.

The results

The construction industry reported a significantly higher degree of harm compared to the energy industry which generated comparatively less harm for the same period. Construction scored an industry average Safe365 Safety Index™ of 48.5% demonstrating a significantly lower level of health & safety maturity. The Electricity, Gas, Water & Waste Services industry, by comparison, had a significantly higher maturity level with an industry average Safe365 Safety Index™ of 59.4% and a correspondingly and significantly lower harm profile. Both industries have large workforces with significant operational exposure to health, safety and well bring risk.

 

 

The learning

While further longitudinal research is required, there is increasing evidence to support the proposition that systematically measuring, improving and monitoring a business’ health and safety maturity is likely to support an outcome of reduced harm to workers in the workplace.

Whether in construction, energy or any other industry, implementing the disciplines of measuring maturity, improving capability and culture, monitoring continuous improvement and having ongoing visibility of progress and accountability can be a simple exercise that may:

1. Reduce the probability of harm to workers
2. Support officer due diligence and effective governance
3. Ensure the business remains efficient in using resources to improve in critical areas
4. Ensure the business can benchmark itself against other businesses
5. Increase the attractiveness of both the commercial and employment brand of the business

Enabling better health and safety at work

Our team at Safe365® is driven to put these data-driven, market insights, into the hands of all businesses, whether small, medium, large or multi-national so that we can enable thousands more customers to realise the benefits of improved health, safety and well-being maturity for their business and associated improvement in workplace harm rates.

Safe365® will continue to mine it’s extensive, growing data set to seek out evidence-based leading indicators for businesses to track improvement in health and safety capability, culture, performance and engagement including providing users with predictive analytics to support RoI, improved safety outcomes, improved business performance and productivity. This work is underway at Safe365 HQ – we will keep you informed of our progress.

In the meantime, you can measure your own business maturity and see how you score on the Safe365 Safety Index™. Complete a free assessment and see how you compare vs the market.

• NZ: safe365.co.nz
• UK / International: safe365global.com
• AUS: safe365.com.au