• Plan
• Do
• Check
• Act

Key actions in measuring performance effectively

Leaders

• Demonstrate commitment to the process
• Ensure that systems are in place to report performance upwards so that you, as leaders or directors, can review and be assured that legal compliance is achieved and maintained
• Make certain there is a process in place to report serious incidents upwards immediately
• Receive and review reports at regular intervals
• Question results and ensure that action is planned to tackle poor performance and ensure the system you use to manage health and safety works

Managers

Think about who will monitor what

You may need to involve different levels within the management chain, as well as workers' representatives and health and safety advisers

Decide how often monitoring will take place

• Be proportionate
• Think about your risk profile
• Monitor key risks and precautions more often and in more detail
• Remember that the frequency of some monitoring or inspections is determined by law

Plan what action you will take if your measure goes up or down

There's no use getting information about performance if you haven't got some idea of what you will do if performance looks like it needs to improve 

Use performance measurement results

• To improve health and safety performance
• To learn from human and organisational failures
• To share lessons learned within your own organisation and with other organisations

Review your performance measures every so often against your policy

• Changes in your business could mean that existing performance measures are out of date
• You may also find the measures you've chosen don't help you understand how well you're managing health and safety. In these circumstances, you will need to update your approach

For sites with major-accident hazards, focus on performance measures for critical activities or plant

• Safety-critical tasks with much human interaction
• Operational performance of safety-critical devices, eg relief valves

Worker consultation and involvement

• Involve your workforce in setting and monitoring your health and safety performance measures
  • Workers may have important information as to which measures make the difference when it comes to risk
• Involve everyone in the monitoring process
  • Encourage workers to monitor their own work area, reporting any issues they observe
    
  • Make reports available to everyone within the organisation

Competence

Use the results of monitoring to feed into future training plans