Day 6, egin the Review of Loss Data

A major element of an effective risk and safety process is to reduce the level and the potential for injuries to employees, third-parties (non-employees), and damage to equipment, materials, or facilities. A number of questions need to be asked that include:

• Does the organization have a substantial history of injury and damage?
• How does it compare to its industry?
• What is the workers compensation loss history?
• What are the types and severity of the losses that are occurring?
• Which way are losses trending? Have you inherited a process that has loss-producing incidents trending up, down or flat?
• Based on the loss history, is the organization being targeted by regulators, lawyers and activist?

You must have a clear understanding and knowledge of the losses that have or are occurring. While this may appear to be backward looking, your purpose is two fold in the development of a safety process – reduce both current losses and the risk faced by the organization to a level that is acceptable – Acceptable not just to management, but to employees and society in general. Your goal is to clearly identifying the quality of the current safety culture. You have located, hopefully, the loss data, loss analyses, accident investigations, and OSHA logs on day 5. Today, begin an in-depth review of the data. If your company has risk management/insurance personnel, set an appointment with them. If not, identify who handles the insurance program.  Find out as much as possible about the claims history from their perspective. Ask about outstanding/open claims, bad cases, incurred costs, etc.  Even in this era of data driven programs, many safety managers may not be taking full advantage of potential information from the risk/insurance department. Workers’ Compensation data will provide a wealth of information concerning the types of injuries, where they are the injuries occurring, as well as occurrence by time of day, day of week, month, department, by supervisor, incurred costs, etc. depending on the quality of the risk management information system. If your organization has a risk information system, try to get access and learn how to use it to develop special reports especially if it has ad hoc reporting capability. A combination of first reports of injury, accident investigations, loss runs and analysis can assist the targeting of your efforts to specific loss producing situations. The OSHA log and Workers Compensation data will parallel but not be the same. What may not be an OSHA recordable may be a Workers Compensation Claim. General Liability – This may not be a part of your responsibility but can provide further insights on operational risk areas that are harming non-employees. Incidents that harm non-employees may also be setting conditions that harm employees. If non-employees are being harmed by operations, the overall safety culture is weak. Auto Liability - As with General Liability, the same can be said about Auto Liability, except here you get four whacks – auto/vehicle incidents can injury employees and non-employees as well as cause property damage and incur legal expenses. Does your organization have a well managed and thorough fleet safety program? If not, you have another of risk to work on. Property – Another area is to determine if property damage claims are occurring. Who has responsibility for facilities? These reports can give indicators of fire protection and life safety issues and risks. Cost of Risk - Finally, try to find out the organization’s “Cost of Risk”. This is basically the sum total of all claims and insurance costs plus administration costs. It can provide another indicator about the state of the safety culture. If the “COR” is greater that approximately 1% of total revenue, you may have a serious problem – injuries and damage may be having an impact on the financial success of the organization.  Depending on the industry the COR can range widely. The higher the ratio, the less apt the organization is to have an effective safety culture. Presentation - As you develop your information, begin considering how you must structure any reports or presentations. Determine the style, format, types of charts, etc. used by the organization. While you may have a great style of presentation, the organization may have a style it prefers and already understands. Check with the quality control department as a possible source as they may be doing various analyses in formats you can use. Summary of Day 6 – Review and analyze the loss information in detail.   Begin to further define areas that must be prioritized for targeted activities to reduce claims of all types and control risk and hazards.