Element 4: Health and Safety Monitoring and Measuring

Active and Reactive Monitoring

Introduction
Monitoring of health and safety performance is a vital. It is concerned with the recording
of incidents and accidents at work, their investigation, the legal reporting requirements and
simple analysis of incidents to help managers benefit from the investigation and recording
process.
Measurement is a key step in any management process and forms the basis of continuous
improvement. If measurement is not carried out correctly, the effectiveness of the health and
safety management system is undermined and there is no reliable information to show managers
how well the health and safety risks are controlled.
Managers should check by asking key questions to ensure that arrangements for health
and safety risk control are in place, comply with the law as a minimum, and operate effectively.

Importance of Monitoring:
The importance of monitoring as part of a health and safety management system, because:

 It reinforces management's commitment to health and safety objectives;

 Helps in developing a positive health and safety culture by rewarding good work;
 Assures the compliance with the performance standards;
 Identifies the areas for improvement;
 Enables in making decisions for remedial measures for any identified deficiencies;
 Assists in setting the targets for the future improvement of performance;
 It motivates managers and employees for better performance and continual
improvement.

Purpose of Monitoring:
 Identify deficiencies on H & S practices: Through monitoring the deficiencies in the
health &safety systems and procedures can be identified
 Actual performance versus targets: Monitoring helps to understand the current trend of
the organization with respect to health & safety.
 Tuning the H&S procedure
 To benchmark
 Make decisions on suitable remedial measures
 Set priorities and establish realistic timescales.
 Assess compliance
 Provide information to Management

Types of Monitoring (Checking) Health and Safety Performances

Health and Safety performance can be monitored by:
1. Active Monitoring
2. Reactive Monitoring

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Active monitoring
It is methods of monitoring performance of health & safety at workplace before
accidents, incidents, ill-health or things go wrong.
Active monitoring measure can be done by ensuring proactively – Safety standards,
Safety Survey, Safety Audit, Safety inspection, Safety tour, safety sampling before things go
wrong at work place.

Reactive monitoring
It is methods of monitoring performance of health & safety at workplace, after accidents,
incidents, ill health or things go wrong.

Reactive monitoring measure can be done by– injuries, accidents, ill-health, damage of property,
various hazards, as a indicators after things go wrong at work

Performance Standards Review:

The process of assessing the overall performance and monitoring results of an
organization, so as to evaluate the current performance against standards and thereby taking
necessary actions to continuous improvement of health and safety system

In this way active monitoring is concerned with checking the physical condition of the
work place and the way that, hazards being controlled by:

 Numbers of quality of risk assessment covering work activities

 Provision of health and Safety training schedule
 Completion of consultative committee meetings to schedule
 Completion of workplace inspection to schedule
 Completion of safety review meetings to schedule

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 Difference between Active Monitoring and Reactive Monitoring:
Active Monitoring Reactive Monitoring
1.Safety Sampling 1.Accident
2.Safety Tours Investigation Report
3.Safety Survey 2. Near Miss
4. Safety Inspection Investigation Report
5.Health 3. Occupational Ill
Surveillance health Report
4. Enforcement
Action Records
5. Accident Claim
Records

Contents of Active Monitoring

It should contain the elements necessary to have proactive system and should include:
 Monitoring of the achievement of specific plans, establish performance criteria and
objectives
 The systematic inspection of work systems, premises, plant and equipment
 Surveillance of the working environment, including work organization
 Surveillance of worker’s health, where appropriate, through suitable medical monitoring
or follow-up of workers for early detection of signs and symptoms of harm to health in
order to determine the effectiveness of prevention of control measures, and
 Compliance with applicable national laws and regulations, collective agreements and
other commitments on OSH to which the organization subscribes

Active monitoring — how to measure performance: Types of inspection

Active monitoring employs several complementary methods which address differing aspects
and areas of the organization. These methods may be usefully categorized as follows:
 
The Safety Audit: A safety audit is a thorough, systematic and critical examination of an
organizations health and safety management systems/ procedures to identify the defects in it and
to provide necessary corrective actions to it.

The Safety Survey: It is usually a detailed assessment of one aspect of an organization's SMS,
e.g. the organization’s training arrangements

The Safety Inspection: Consists of a formal assessment of workplace safety, and the
identification of hazardous conditions or practices, for subsequent remedial action.

The Safety Tour: They can be planned to cover the whole site or operation progressively or to
focus attention on current priorities in the overall safety effort. The safety tour addresses the
’people’ aspects of workplace safety, and by discussions with a range of staff, establishes their
familiarity with safety procedures and requirements. It is normally carried out by middle and
senior management, as one means of demonstrating their commitment to safety. A questionnaire
is frequently used.

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The Safety Sampling: is a useful technique that encourages organizations to concentrate on one
particular area or subject at a time. A specific area is chosen which can be inspected in about 30
minutes. A checklist is drawn up to facilitate the inspection, looking at specific issues. These
may be different types of hazard: they may be unsafe acts or conditions noted; they may be
proactive, good behavior or practices noted. The inspection team or person then carries out the
sampling at the same time each day or week in the specified period. The results are recorded
and analyzed to see if the changes are good or bad over time of course, defects noted must be
brought to the notice of the appropriate person for action on each occasion.

The Health Surveillance: is also an additional proactive measure to monitoring worker health
which reflects effectiveness of controls.

Benchmarking: refers to comparison of health and safety performance of an organization with

similar organization in the industry. This provides indication of how well the organization is
performing with such similar companies.
Performance standards: of Health & Safety Management system to be checked during active
monitoring.

Reactive monitoring

Measuring failure — Reactive monitoring

Failures in risk control also need to be measured (reactive monitoring), to provide
opportunities to check performance learn from failures and improve the health and safety
management system.

Reactive monitoring arrangements include systems to identify and report:

 injuries and work-related ill-health (details of the incidence rate calculation are given in ,
other losses such as damage to property;
 incidents, including those with the potential to cause injury, ill-health or loss (near
misses);
 hazards and faults;
 weaknesses or omissions in performance standards and systems, including complaints
from employees and enforcement action by the authorities.

Investigating, Recording and Reporting Incidents

Function of accident investigation

Incidents and accidents, whether they cause damage to property or more serious injury
and/or ill-health to people, should be properly and thoroughly investigated to allow an
organization to take the appropriate action to prevent from recurrence.
Incidents can be categorized as – near miss, accident, danger occurrence and ill-health.

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 The level of investigation used should be determined by considering the foreseeable
consequences of the incident should it happen again, not simply by looking at the actual outcome
that occurred on the occasion.

The process for investigating the incident: Incident investigation procedures:

Basic Investigation procedures

Step1: Gather factual information

Step2: Analyze the information and draw conclusions

Step3: Identify suitable control measures

Step4: Plan the remedial action

Step 1 Gather factual information-

Identify witnesses, Collect factual information, Photo/sketch, Measurements, Notes,

Mark up plans, Samples, Interview witnesses, Examine documents.
These documents will include Site plans, Company health and safety policy, Risk
assessments, Training records, Safe systems of work, Permits-to-work, Maintenance records,
Previous accident reports, and Sickness records.

Step 2 Analyze the information and draw conclusions

Based upon the gathered information it is important to draw a conclusion.

Here one has to identify immediate cause and underlying cause (root cause). The
immediate cause can be unsafe act and unsafe condition but the underlying causes might be
different because they are the reasons behind immediate cause such as No supervision, No PPE
provided, No training, No maintenance, No checking or inspections, Inadequate or no risk
assessments etc.

Step 3 Identify suitable control measures

At the time of accident what are the control measures that were missing from the work
place and what can be needed. The control measures should be rectified for both immediate and
underlying causes.

Step 4 Plan the remedial action-

Prepare the action plan for recovery, usually made in a tabular form. Dangerous
conditions must be dealt with immediately and interim actions may be required.
Underlying causes will require more complex actions and will take time, effort, disruption,
money & need for prioritization.

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 Basic Good investigation is a key element to making improvements in health and safety
performance. Incident investigation is considered to be part of a reactive monitoring system
because it is triggered after an event.
Incident/accident investigation is based on the logic that:
 all incidents/accidents have causes, eliminate the cause and eliminate future incidents;
 the direct and indirect causes of an incident/accident can be discovered through
investigation;
 Corrective action indicated by the causation can be taken to eliminate future
incidents/accidents.

Types of incident

As per the nature of occurrences, incident can be classified as under:

Accident:
An accident is an unplanned, unwanted, undesired, unexpected event that results harm as, injury,
damage or loss

Example:
 a brick fall on to someone’s head from scaffold and got killed.
 A truck driver took sudden turn and hit to other vehicle
Both the above accidents are unplanned and unexpected but not done deliberately.

Note: Any deliberate attempt to cause injury, loss or damage shall not be an accident.

Accident cam be further categorised as:

Injury Accident: Unexpected, unplanned, event that leads to personal injury

Damage Accident: Unexpected, unplanned, event that leads to damage to property or

equipment.

Near Miss:
An undesired, unexpected, unplanned, unwanted event that has potential to cause harm, injury,
loss, damage, but doesn’t result in any harm, injury, loss, damage.

Example:
 A bricks fall from height but just narrowly misses another worker standing down without
causing any injury or harm.

Difference between Accident and Near Miss

Accident always cause loss (Injury, harm, damage), but near miss does not cause any loss by
harm, injury, loss, damage.

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Dangerous Occurrence

An event, defined under law and regulation with potential to cause injury, ill-health to person at
work or to the public.

Example:
The dangerous occurrences are defined in the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous
Occurrences Regulations 2013 (often known as RIDDOR) and are always reportable to the
enforcement authorities.

Example: The collapse of a scaffold or a crane or the failure of any passenger- carrying
equipment.

Work-Related Ill Health (Occupational Ill-Health)

This is concerned with those acute and chronic illnesses or physical and mental disorders
that are either caused or triggered by workplace activities.
Such conditions may be induced by the particular work activity of the individual at
workplace.
The time interval between exposure and the onset of the illness may be short (e.g. acute
asthma attacks) or long (e.g. chronic deafness or cancer).

It is a disease / mental illness caused by a person’s at work

Example- Dermatitis is a disease of the skin often caused by work activities with solvents,
cement, detergent etc.

Occupational disease
Occupational disease is defined as – A disease contracted as a result of an exposure to risk
factors arising from work activity.

Level of Investigation
The amount of time, money and effort put into incident investigation should be proportionate to
the risk associated with the incident should happen it happen again.

To determine the level of investigation to apply, the risk associated with each incident can be
estimated in order to allocate appropriate resources. Risk can be estimated by considering the
likelihood of occurrences and foreseeable severity of harm or loss or damage.

To determine, investigation should be:

 Minimal level:

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 Immediate line manager/supervisor will look into the circumstances of the
accident/incident and try to learn any lessons which will prevent future incidents

 Low-level

Investigation will involve a short investigation by the relevant supervisor or line manager
into the circumstances and immediate underlying and root causes of the accident/incident, to try
to prevent a recurrence and to learn any general lessons.

 Medium Level

Investigation will involve a more detailed investigation by the relevant supervisor or line
manager, the health and safety adviser and employee representatives will look jointly for the
immediate, dying and root causes.

 High level

Investigation will involve a team- based investigation, involving supervisors or line

managers, health and safety advisers and employee representatives. It will be carried out under
the supervision of senior management or directors and will look for the immediate, underlying
and root causes.

Recording and reporting incidents

Recording: The process of documentation / evidences of the event

Reporting: The process of informing people that an accident has occur- this can be internally
with the organization or externally with enforcing agencies or emergency services.

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 Internal systems for collecting and analyzing incident data
Managers need effective internal systems to know whether the organization is getting better or
worse, to know what is happening and why, and to assess whether objectives are being achieved.
The incident report form is the basic starting point for any internal system. Each organization
needs to lay down what the system involves and who is responsible to do each part of the
procedure. This will involve:
 what type of incidents should be reported;
 who completes the incident report form — normally the manager responsible for the
investigation;
 how copies should be circulated in the organization
 who is responsible to provide management measurement data;
 P how the incident data should be analyzed and at what intervals;
 the arrangements to ensure that action is taken on the data provided.

The data should seek to answer the following questions:

 are failure incidents occurring, including injuries, ill- health and other loss incidents?
 where are they occurring?
 what is the nature of the failures?
 how serious are they?
 what are the potential consequences?
 what are the reasons for the failures?
 how much has it cost?
 what improvements in controls and the management system are required?
 how do these issues vary with timed
 is the organization getting better or worse?

Investigation Team Members:

Categories of persons who may be useful members of an internal accident investigation
team would be:

Senior Manager: should be a team member because this demonstrates the commitment of
management to carrying out the investigation. It also ensures a level of authority to carry out
appropriate remedial action after the investigation is completed.

Line Manager or Supervisor: should be present as they are likely to be familiar with the
working practices surrounding the accident.
Safety Advisor: can give advice on legal aspects and would be familiar with the nature of the
hazards, risks and control measures in place.

Representative of Employee Safety (or safety representative): should be part of the team in
order to represent the interests of employees/workers and to support staff during the official
interviews of the investigation.

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Technical Expert: such as an engineer may sometimes be appropriate if specialist technical
advice is required.

Need for recording accident investigation (Documentation):

 Accidents should be reported and recorded in order to comply with where applicable
legislative requirements
 To enable an accident investigation to take place (with the aim of preventing accidents of
a similar type)
 To identify accident trends from later statistical analysis
 Accident reporting and recording can also lead to a useful review of risk assessments and
can assist in the consideration of any civil claims that may arise
 Helps to devise methods to prevent similar incidents in future
 Record for future reference
 Learn about the accidents of the past.

Reporting the Incident to external authorities/ agencies:

The employer or a responsible person is required to notify the authorities according to national
laws and regulations. All countries agree that, Fatal accident must be reported, however, the level
of other incidents also to be reported externally.

Typical reportable incidents are:

 Major Injury: (loss of hand, leg, eyes etc)
 Dangerous Occurrences:
 Occupational disease

Typical incidents which need to be reported

The ILO Code of Practice requires that occupational accidents are classified in two stages
depending on the maturity of the national reporting system
To provide evidence for these statistics organizations will have to report as a minimum:
 Occupational accidents resulting in death;
 Occupational non-fatal accidents with at least three consecutive days of incapacity
excluding the day of the accident;
 Commuting accidents;
  Occupational diseases as included in Appendix 5.4. National laws or regulations should
specify that notification of an occupational disease by an employer is mandatory, at least
whenever the
 employer receives a medical certificate to the effect that one of his or her workers is
suffering from an occupational disease;
 Dangerous occurrences as defined by national laws (no specimen list is given by ILO).

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Health and Safety Auditing
Audit
The structured process of collecting independent information on the efficiency, effectiveness
and reliability of the total health and safety management system and drawing up plans for
corrective actions.

In short, Auditing is the systematic, objective, critical evaluation of an organization’s health and
safety management system.

Systematic: Follows the series of logical steps and stages and prepared plan

Objective: All findings are evidence based mandatory

Critical: It highlights area of non-compliance or non-conformance

The purpose of an audit to provide the findings as critical feedbacks on the management systems
so that appropriate follow up actions can be taken for continual improvement of non-compliance
or non-conformances.

 Auditing helps to improve:

 The management system
 The safety policy
 The arrangements made for specific issues
 Health and safety performances

The distinction between Audits and inspection: The Difference between audit
and inspection:

Audit:
 Focus on management systems
 It examines thoroughly documents such as safety policy, arrangements, procedures, risk
assessments, safe system of work, methods statements, etc.
 It looks, closely to records of training, maintenance, inspections, statutory examinations,
etc.
 It verifies standards exits in workplace by direct interviews and direct observations.

Inspection:
 Simple process of checking the workplace for uncontrolled hazards and addressing if any
found
 Inspection just verifies safety measures and its availability, inspected, signed etc.

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Stages of Audit

The issues that need to be considered at the planning stage of the audit

Pre-audit preparations
The issues to be considered at the planning stage of the audit include:
 Defining the scope of audit (Health, Safety, Environment, Security, etc.);
 area of audit (single site or many sites);
 extent of audit (comprehensive or restricted to specific aspects of management system);
 personnel involve in audit(trained auditors – external or internal,
 persons coordinating (persons to interact);
 preparing audit schedules (date, time of visit, location);
 Documents that may be consulted prior to audit (policy etc.)

During the Audit

Information sources including interviewing people, looking at documents and checking
physical conditions are usually approached in the following order:
a) Preparatory work
 meet with relevant managers and employee representatives to discuss and agree the
objectives and scope of the audit;
 prepare and agree the audit procedure with
 Managers;
 Gather and consider documentation.
b) On site
 interviewing;
 review and assessment of additional documents
 observation of physical conditions and work activities.
c) Conclusion
 assemble the evidence;
 evaluate the evidence;
 write an audit report;
 presentation of findings to management and workforce representatives where appropriate

It is essential to start with a relevant standard or benchmark against which the adequacy of a
health and safety management system can be judged. If standards are not clear, assessment
cannot be reliable.
Auditing should not be seen as a fault-finding activity. It should make a valuable contribution
to the health and safety management system and to learning. It should recognize achievement as
well as highlight areas where more needs to be done.

At the end of the Audit

 Verbal feedback to be given at the end of audit
 Presentation to the management team
 Verbal feedback with recommendations to improvements, priorities and timescales

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  Management may take needful action based on feedback and reports

Implementation of required standards if needed:

 Major non-conformance: A significant issues / breach, require urgent or immediate
actions, this may result in failure in management system.
In ISO term, if any major non-conformance notified, this will be ground for
refusal of certification

 Minor non-conformance: An issue which is not serious concerns, unlikely to result in

injury. Require for correction with certain timescales.
In ISO term, if any minor non-conformance notified, this will grant for
certification with required correction.

 Observation: An opinion given by the auditor to the management, but decision will of
management for implementation.

External and Internal Audits

Auditing may be carried out by internally or externally.

 Internal auditing will be performed by someone within the organization

 External auditing someone external consultant will be identifying the defects.

Advantages of Internal Audit

 Less exoensive
 are familiar with the workplace,
systems, processes and the
organization;
 are likely to be aware of what is
practicable for the industry;
 have the ability to see
improvements or a deterioration
from the last audit;
 are familiar with the workforce
and an individual‘s qualities and
attitude; and
 may easier to arrange than an
external auditor.

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 Disadvantages of Internal Audits
 may miss or gloss over some
issues because of their familiarity;
 may not get honest views from
the work force for fear of the
consequences;
 may not be in possession of
recognized auditing skills;
 may not be up to date with legal
requirements and may be less
likely to be aware of best practice
in other organizations;
 may be subject to pressure from
management and the workforce;
and
 have time constraints imposed
upon them.

Advantages of External Audit Disadvantages of External Audits

 come with a new perspective, a  are unlikely to be familiar with the
fresh pair of eyes; workplace, tasks and processes;
 need to ask more questions to  will not be familiar with the
understand the systems in operation workforce and their individual
which can elicit underlying attitudes to health and safety and will
problems; have difficulty in obtaining their full
 may have solutions learnt elsewhere cooperation;
that would benefit the organization;  may be unfamiliar with the industry
 can be more impartial in their and seek unrealistic standards; and
presentation of the audit results;
 are more likely to have the  may well be more costly than an
necessary auditing skills; internal member of staff.
 will not be inhibited from criticizing
members of management or the
workforce;
 are more likely to be up to date with
legal requirements and best practice
in other companies.

4.4 Review of Health and Safety Performance

Reasons why an Organization should review its H & S Performances:

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The reasons are the following:

 To identify substandard H&S practices & conditions (perhaps by means of workplace

inspections)

 To identify trends in relation to different types of incident, or incidents in general (by

analysis of relevant incident data)

 To compare actual performance with previously set targets; to "benchmark" the

organization’s performance against that of similar organizations or an industry norm;

 To identify whether control measures are in use & to assess their effectiveness; to be able
to make decisions on appropriate remedial measures for any deficiencies identified

 To be able to make decisions on appropriate remedial measures for any deficiencies

identified;

 To set priorities & establish realistic targets timescales

 To assess compliance with legal requirements

 To be able to provide a Board of Directors or safety committee with relevant information.

Purpose of Regular Reviews

The board should review health and safety performance at least once a year. The review process
should:

The review process is to answer the questions

 Are we on target?
 If not, why not?
 What to do?
 What do have to change?

 examine whether the health and safety policy reflects the organization's current priorities,
plans and targets
 examine whether risk management and other health and safety systems have been
effectively reported to the board
 Report health and safety shortcomings, and the effect of all relevant board and
management decisions
 Decide actions to address any weakness and a system to monitor their implementation.
 Consider immediate reviews in the light of major shortcomings or events

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 Issues / Factor to be considered in reviews
Reviews will be wide ranging and may cover one specific subject or a range of subjects for
an area of the organization. They should aim to include:
 evaluation of compliance with legal and organizational requirements;
 Incident data / Accident data, recommendations and action plans from investigations;
 inspections, surveys, tours and sampling;
 absences and sickness records and their analysis;
 any reports on quality assurance or environmental protection;
 audit results and implementation;
 monitoring of data, reports and records;
 communications from enforcing authorities and insurers;
 any developments in legal requirements or best practice within the industry;
 changed circumstances or processes;
 benchmarking with other similar organizations; k complaints from neighbors,
customers and the public;
 effectiveness of consultation and internal communications;
 whether health and safety objectives have been met;
 whether actions from previous reviews have been completed.

Outputs from the Reviews:

Various outputs will arise from the review process. Records of management review should be
retained.
Some organization, required to report annually to their shareholders an their health and safety
performance through annual reports.

Many organizations have a policy on continual improvement which should be applied to

health and safety management in the same way as other management issues.
The Continual improvement of safety performance will be achieved through:
 active and reactive evaluations of facilities, equipment, documentation and procedures
throng safety audits and surveys;
 active evaluation of each individual's performance to verify the fulfillment of their safety
responsibilities; and
 a reactive evaluation in order to verify the effectiveness of the system for control and
mitigation of risk.
A strategic target set by the senior management and should be distributed among different level
of management

Senior Management: Set strategic target

Middle management: Review performance in areas under their control and set targets to bring
their area in line with the strategic targets
Junior Management: Review performance and set local targets will collectively try to achieve
the strategic targets

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