What Measurement Is For
The four jobs that health, safety and environment measurement does, and how it fits into a management system.
11 min
Activities: 0 of 2
Numbers are a tool, not the goal
Every organisation that manages health, safety and environment (HSE) produces numbers: injuries, inspections, audits, spills, training hours. Many produce far more numbers than they use. Before choosing any indicator, it helps to be clear about what measurement is for. If a number does not do one of its jobs, it is overhead.
Measurement is the Check step of the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle used in management system standards. You plan controls, you carry them out, you check whether they work, and you act on what you find. Without the check, the cycle cannot learn.
The four jobs of measurement
Tell you whether controls are in place and working, so problems are found before they cause harm.
Two examples
Example 1: the monthly pack. A regional manager receives a 40-page HSE pack each month. It shows every site's injury count, training hours and audit score. Asked what decision the pack changed last quarter, the manager cannot name one. The pack serves the "account" job only. A shorter report, built around the three most serious risks in the region and whether their controls are working, would serve "monitor" and "decide".
Example 2: the maintenance backlog. A site starts tracking overdue safety-critical maintenance each week. Within a month, the measure shows that one team has twice the backlog of others. The manager moves a technician to that team. The number has done its job: it changed a decision before anything failed.
A site tracks a number every month, but nobody can name a decision it has changed. Which job of measurement is it failing?
Match the job to the example
Connect each job of measurement with an example of it working.
- Monitor
- Learn
- Decide
- Account