You could measure how many H&S events are being reported. Reporting can be seen as an indication on how well risks are managed and the level of worker engagement. If promoted, reporting can be seen as a positive rather than a negative and it means that workers are engaged and willing to participate in H&S. Little or no reports can mean that workers are not engaged in H&S.

It's a bit hard without knowing what you're doing - better to measure leading indicators, and measuring what you are currently doing (less expense).
I've attached a couple of documents giving guidance.

As well as what you're measuring, also have an idea of what you are wanting to see (e.g. low reporting can either be a sign of a low number of incidents, or a poor reporting culture). If I use report numbers, it is only in the initial stages, and I'm expecting to see an increase in the number of reports, as Teena said above its useful as an indication of a good reporting culture. I've also used average risk score of reports (but be careful with this as it can also be manipulated).

We currently have around 400 new measures for our HSMS developed by a new H&S Manager and causing a re-structure.

As well as the usual LTI, LTIFR etc we are also now reporting on employee and management engagement (meeting attendance etc), whether or not our h&S documentation is up to date, SDSs being current, corrective actions issued (incl to contractors, from both events and audits) and actions overdue, Contractor inductions, Traning completed or expired, health checks (% of staff completing and declining), equipment - expired or new etc That's just a very brief snapshot and at the moment still slightly painful as we work out where information is stored

On the reporting theme, here FYI is a story from a recent edition of our Safeguard Update subscription newsletter in which Andrew Hopkins sketches out how a truly effective reporting programme could work. It comes from his many years of studying when things have gone wrong and how reporting systems have failed to pick up the early warning signs.
Have a read. What do people think?

Effective anomaly reporting
Imagine an organisation which has a truly effective bad news reporting system – one which encourages people to report things they aren’t comfortable with, gently teaches them what is worth reporting and what is not, generates rich conversations about risk, and identifies small problems well before they can cause harm.
Emeritus professor Andrew Hopkins has worked out a way to achieve such a system and spoke about it at the Australian Institute of Health and Safety’s recent online conference.
He said most reporting systems focus only on incidents and injuries and implicitly discourage other kinds of reports, such as process upsets (when a process briefly goes outside its safe limits and the operators have to bring it back under control) or inappropriate procedures (for which people develop work-arounds which alter the risks they face).
Other useful things seldom reported include decisions to defer regular maintenance, occasions when a process is under-staffed, when machinery is found to be in poor condition or structures corroded, or when poor design forces risky actions (eg standing on a ladder to read a dial).
More generally, an effective reporting system will capture anomalies: something has happened which shouldn’t have.
“You can’t specify these things in advance,” said Hopkins. “You need people to be able to recognise the potential of what they are seeing; to be risk-aware.”
He said people working in organisations with typical reporting systems tend to ask themselves: is this something I am required to report? If not, I won’t report it. An effective reporting system would have people ask: is this something I should report? If so, I will report it.
An effective reporting system, said Hopkins, does four things well. First, it makes reporting easy (eg: a phone app where people can write brief text and add photos).
Second, it ensures reports go to the right place (eg: to the person’s supervisor; to the site manager; and to a more removed or corporate function concerned with risk which can analyse trends.)
Third, it requires every report to be replied to, without exception.
Fourth, it constantly encourages reports, but in a way which over time teaches people about the kinds of things they should report.
He suggests a monthly competition for the most helpful report, run by a judging panel and with a significant reward, which could be $1000 in larger organisations. The best report is announced by the site manager, along with an explanation of why it won.
“You will not only get the bad news. You’ll get a richer conversation about risk and a greater sense of ownership. It moves the business in the direction of becoming a learning organisation.”
Two cautions from Hopkins. First, don’t set a target for a certain quota of reports per interval. It only encourages trivial reports. Second, this kind of effective bad news reporting system requires a commitment of time and money resource by the executive – without that it won’t work.

thanks for your responses everyone, very helpful.

Hi Jeanne,
I would recommend that the first thing you do is choose KPI's that align with the goals of your organisation and in particular what they want to achieve over a six month period.
Choose no more than 5 things to measure as any more than that can take the focus away from the core goals.
Then instead of focusing on the number of inputs made such as number of employees trained, focus on the quality of the outputs such as the quality of the training, was information provided for the delegates to review prior to the course, was the training aligned to the business needs, did the trainer go beyond the minimum requirements of NZQA etc
Also, don't just focus on the physical aspects of the business, please consider evaluating the health outcomes from health monitoring, the quality and effectiveness of communication at a team meeting.
Also, please don't compare your stats with other companies, branches or industries because nothing is comparable with your business and should never be used to portray it in a positive or negative manner against anyone else.
Use the the numbers to guide you where to focus and where to dig deeper and get your employees involved early by asking them what should be measured and why?
Finally I'm not keen on giving individual rewards for safety, but do celebrate the journey with your team, no matter what happens good or bad
Cheers,
Mark Taylor

Also, I’m not sure why we use the term lead indicators because (like a near miss) it’s an oxymoron as lead indicators cannot be measured because if they have, they’ve already lagged
Lead indicators should not be measured by numbers reports submitted, but by the effectiveness and quality of the outputs suggested by those directly effected by the inputs

Reporting of near misses and hazards. Put in a system for suggestions and improvements. Include ideas for wellbeing

Wow Alex 400 KPI’s that’s equivalent to 400 reports and 400 interventions
Can you explain the rational behind this decision?

We are in a high risk industry and management currently wants a more granular view which is also split by 4 areas within the overall group. I believe part of the reasoning is prep work for achieving ISO45001 as the measures are grouped by HSMS element and a number are different combinations of similar information i.e. % of e audits completed against the target and also how many of the management team achieved their individual targets. Meeting a lot of the measures should also mean we are completing the activities that need to be completed as part of the HSMS - if we can't complete the items being measured we may also have some staffing issues or fundamental problems. My role is now dedicated to analysis of our system so I'm tasked with finding the information or finding a way to record it

400?????
I'm audited right up the wing wang with ISO, financial and other international standards etc etc and I dont think I could add up 400 in total among that lot let alone just HSE measures

Hi Jeanne,
The Business Leaders Safety Forum have a couple of papers on measuring what matters that are worth a read. The content and speed of reporting is something I am constantly working on and our reporting has evolved over the last 5 years. Reporting the positive is possible however you have to build the capacity or system to do so. We can currently report on percentage of work complete without damage to plant or injury to people but this like the LTIFR and is not really helpful unless you relate it to other tangible things like the complexity of work and ability to recover etc it will not be as useful as you want it to be.

We are very, very granular - the following is an excerpt:
# HSMS Element 12: Incident, Injury & Illness Management
12.0 % of events reported within 24 hours
12.1 % of Notifiable Workplace Events reported to Work Safe NZ
12.2 % of Notifiable Public or Property Damage Incidents reported to Energy Safety
12.3 % of Notifiable Environmental Damage Incidents reported to Regional Council/Environmental Agency

Reading the above gives me the view that H&S is treated as a silo division of all other business function. Has anyone thought how reporting can be part of other business functions like booking to time codes. Say time is booked to a project against codes that divide time to productive, unproductive, safety incident, injured e.t.c. then your management system can pull the data out to a dashboard. Just an idea.

That's what we do here Productive paid time, unproductive paid time, then time off for sickness, work accidents, non-work accidents. I don't drill lower as the number would be so small as to render it meaningless.

We are in a high risk industry and management currently wants a more granular view which is also split by 4 areas within the overall group. I believe part of the reasoning is prep work for achieving ISO45001 as the measures are grouped by HSMS element and a number are different combinations of similar information i.e. % of e audits completed against the target and also how many of the management team achieved their individual targets. Meeting a lot of the measures should also mean we are completing the activities that need to be completed as part of the HSMS - if we can't complete the items being measured we may also have some staffing issues or fundamental problems. My role is now dedicated to analysis of our system so I'm tasked with finding the information or finding a way to record it — Alex

Alex, just be cautious and make sure that the ISO45001 standard is being used as a tool to assess and develop your H&S Managment system against and not a template H&S Management System, especially if you ever hear the quote that "what gets measured, gets managed."

Also be wary that you do not fall into the thinking that more data is more information, be critical of why you are collecting each data point, what it is telling you and what are the actions that are intended to be taken based on that data.

And on that last point, a recent Safety of Work podcast talked around what happended on the far side of an Audit and how/why actions do or don't get done.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/29rFNZtxnOX37dFVuYV2mM?si=yPLd91ZKRFubmzQgjnRJZg