How to Measure Safety in the Electrical Utility Industry

A carefully crafted culture of safety is imperative to the electrical utility industry, but it can be difficult to develop methods and strategies for how to measure safety. Safety is often an abstract, intangible concept. There must be calculable, quantifiable safety metrics to ensure that the culture of safety is properly maintained. Fortunately, there are several safety metrics that you can easily implement. Using these metrics, you can begin recording potential hazards and track the safety of your workplace.

Safety Audits Completed

They say a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and as such, it’s important to meticulously look for the weaknesses in your current safety protocols. Your workers are your team, your chain. Each member plays a pivotal role, not only in their own safety, but the safety of your team. This is why safety audits are one of the most crucial metrics to measure safety in your workplace. To track safety audits, you can use eSafeTrak’s Observations feature, or spreadsheet software like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.

Training Sessions Completed

Another important metric to help measure safety is tracking the completion of training sessions. Regular training sessions help ensure that your workers know the latest information about industry standards and proper procedures and methods. Meanwhile, all of that information is conveyed in an isolated, distraction-free environment. Tracking attendance for training sessions is essential for determining the safety procedure compliance of your workforce. You can track training session attendance using eSafeTrak’s Training Dashboard, utilizing a registration form, or by having a paper sign-in sheet.

Employee Participation

Similarly, you can hold other kinds of seminars to provide educational resources to your workforce. These seminars can range in many topics. They may discuss new methods and emerging technologies in the industry. Or they may broaden the skillset of your employees. They may be utilized to invite guest lecturers about related topics and fields. This can be a great way to determine the engagement of your employees, because a motivated and attentive employee is a responsible, reliable employee.

Hazards Reported

One of the most important ways to measure safety in your workplace is keeping records of the hazards that have occurred. Of course, the objective is to minimize the number of hazards. But the only way to effectively reduce them is to be aware of their existence. Then, you can creatively determine ways to mitigate them. An effective way to alleviate these hazards is to conduct job briefings before each job. These job briefings illuminate the various potential hazards of each job. eSafeTrak’s Job Briefings and eTailboard™ electronic form features can help with this process.

An important thing to consider when trying to minimize hazards in the workplace is not to heavily incentivize a minimum level of hazard reporting. For example, you should not offer a bonus to the employee with the fewest hazard reports. This often leads to a reduction in reporting, not a reduction in hazards. Naturally, this can actually lead to a much more dangerous working environment. On the contrary, you could incentivize the reporting of hazards with your workers. While this approach may not look as good on paper, it creates a new level of transparency, and fosters a working environment that is actually safe.

Conclusion

While it’s not always easy to have a 100% safe working environment in the electrical utility industry, knowing how to measure safety is the best tool in your toolbox for creating that environment. Tracking this data shows the weak points of your workplace’s protocols and procedures. At that point, you can make corrective measures to alleviate those issues. Software like eSafeTrak can greatly aid the tracking, reporting, and notification of these metrics as well. This will save you time and energy while empowering you to maintain a safe working environment.