My First Annual HSE Performance Report in 2016 – A Quick Guide

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An Annual HSE Performance Report is a document that is put together at the end of a reporting year to highlight the performance of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) against their set targets. The annual report generally captures the highlights and the lowlights, where highlights could include safety awards received, ISO certifications achieved, recognition from an enforcement authority, and the like, and the lowlights as always include total recordable cases (fatalities, lost time injuries, medical treatment cases, and restricted work cases) recorded and other major events like sanctions and penalties that may have been recorded over the reporting timeframe.

In my years of practice, I have had to develop just two(2) Annual HSE Performance Reports. The reason being that I have always had a manager or the global HSE team responsible for that while I worked on the field as either an HSE Supervisor or Advisor Onshore or a Rig Safety Officer Offshore. With my experience developing one and doing it the hard way, I am happy to share the very first report I developed in the early stages of my career. That was a Semi-annual HSE Performance Report, not the best of reports but it at least gives an idea of how I developed it using the 2016 version of the HSE Performance Monitoring tool.

With my current level of skill in designing aesthetic dashboards and graphs, I bet I will slay my next Annual HSE Performance Report when the opportunity presents itself. So please excuse any flaws in the current look of this sample 🙂

So here is a quick guide in terms of the format I used

Table of Contents

Message from the CEO

The most senior person of my organization needed to endorse it to demonstrate his leadership and commitment to safety, strategic direction, and overall performance as demonstrated in the document. I had to provide the message myself, as top management couldn’t be bothered. So I was still literally trying to sell safety.

Introduction to the Annual HSE Performance Report

My introduction mentioned the fact that the document sought to summarize key aspects of our health and safety (H&S) performance and significant areas of activity for the first half of the year, 2016. And that, the report focused less on environmental activities since that would be captured in the Annual Environmental Report to be submitted to the EPA. I then explained that the HSE department would continue to demonstrate an ongoing commitment to accident prevention and improvement of the safety culture of the organization, and the commitment would be demonstrated through Key Performance Indicators, which are fundamental to a good safety management system.

Our Certification

I went ahead to highlight all the ISO certifications we had achieved over the timeframe, which were OHSAS 18001 back in the day, ISO 9001, and LEEA certification for lifting inspection. I added the banners that were issued by the certification body to this section.

Goals and Targets for the Year

In this section, I set out to mention the goals I had agreed with my top management in our Annual HSE Action Plan for the year, and so that served as the source of the KPIs I would be reporting on in the document. Thankfully, they were achievable and I had developed the tool for tracking them. They were the goals and targets. Goals are the overall purpose, so take them as objectives as they had defined targets which make them more specific and smarter.

Safety Training (minimal 1 safety training per month)
Toolbox Participation (minimal 1 toolbox per employee per week)
Hazard Report (minimal 3 hazard reports per employee per year)
Workplace Inspection (minimal 1 inspection per operational staff per week)
Drills for Emergency Preparedness (minimal 2 drills per operational site per year)
Monthly and Yearly HSE Statistics Update
Achieve zero(0) Lost Time Incident (LTI)
Achieve zero (0) Environmental Incident
Internal Audit (minimum of 2 audits per year)
Management Review (minimum of 1 management review per year)

HSE Performance

I explained the entire performance by first grouping them into man-days and man-hours; lagging indicators; and leading indicators. HSE key performance indicators are a set of activities performed to drive and measure the performance of the EHS management system. Key performance indicators can be categorized under lagging and leading indicators, where lagging indicators measure the failures of the management system hence suitable for measuring performance from the rearview mirror while leading indicators are forward-looking indicators used to measure the successes of the management system towards continual improvement.

Man Days and Man Hours

Man days and man-hours are important inputs for assessing health and safety performance, as they help to understand the contribution of each employee’s productivity to safety in a day as per the approved working hours. So each man-day worked or lost, and man-hours worked with or without a lost-time injury is critical. These figures are cumulative and form an essential basis for various analytical techniques such as incident rates to draw the year-to-year comparison and for benchmarking performance against that of other industry players.

Lagging Indicators

Lagging indicators are used to measure the failures of the management system hence suitable for measuring performance from the rearview mirror to develop effective controls to prevent such failures from reoccurring. These range from number of fatalities, lost time injuries, medical treatment cases, restricted work cases, environmental incidents, among others. So I presented a table and a column chart of the failures and then provided further insight as to why we recorded any high numbers. In this case, I indicated that Medical Treated Cases recorded was the highest, and that we could not also achieve the target of zero(0) lost time injury.

Leading Indicators

Leading indicators are forward-looking indicators used to measure the successes of the management system towards continual improvement. They help to prevent failures and deficiencies in the management system. Since we were working with the leading indicators that had already been agreed upon in our Annual HSE Action Plan, and I had a system for tracking them, I took my time to treat each KPI in several bullet points using tables, pie charts, and column charts where applicable to explain the trends and how we have been able to perform or underperformed against our set targets. In all the explanation I sought to give some context to why we may have performed or underperformed.

Accident and Incident Rate

Accident and incident rates are used as a common denominator for comparing the performance of industry players. These comprise accident frequency rate ( could be lost time injury frequency rate or total recordable injury frequency rate), incident severity rate, and others. As part of performance reporting, the trend can be utilized to demonstrate how an organization is reducing the frequency and severity of workplace incidents against an industry benchmark.

Environment

I touched briefly on the environment, where I indicated how the HSE department sought to minimize environmental incidents to the barest minimum but two (2) incidents were recorded and shared the circumstances surrounding them.

Health and Safety Communication

Under health and safety communication, I explained how we ensured effective communication, and that the HSE department continuously engaged and consulted with workers directly on all safety arrangements, where the communication methods used by the HSE department were as follows:

Safety inductions
Peer group discussions
Notices and posters
Safety signs
Toolbox talks/Safety briefings

Safety Induction

These are brief introductory sessions given to new workers and visitors about the nature of workplace hazards and available controls. During such sessions, I ensured that either myself or responsible person for the site communicated our safety policy, hazards and controls to be complied with, the location of escape routes, fire alarms, emergency assembly point, and fire extinguishers that have been put in place to deal with any foreseeable fire emergency. A total of 5 workers were inducted in the period under review.

Peer Group Discussion

We also organized peer group discussions among workers to provide an informal platform for safety discussions. This enabled the workers to raise any workplace concern which affected their health, safety, and welfare to the HSE department.

Notices and Posters

We again, mounted notice boards at all sites to keep workers informed. Notices ranging from our safety policies (HSEQ, Drug, and Alcohol, Injury Management, etc.), emergency response plan, as well as safety training topics, and other informative posters, were put up on the notice boards to serve as constant reminders to workers.

Safety Signs

Safety signs ranging from warning signs (yellow), prohibition signs (red), safety condition (green), and mandatory signs (blue) were pasted at vantage workplace locations to communicate our site standard rules regarding unauthorized entry, use of PPE, precautions to take as well as safe use of an equipment or workplace location.

Toolbox talks/Safety briefings

Toolbox talk was the second-highest indicator. These were face-to-face discussions we conducted weekly to create health and safety awareness and enhance staff participation in health and safety arrangements. Safety briefings are sent to all workers via mail. Some of the areas we covered in the total box talks were as follows: hazards associated with cell phone usage, personal safety, chemical handling, electrical hazards, horseplay, fire safety, etc.

Conclusion

So in conclusion, I would say there is no hard and fast rule, you just have to tell an adequate story of what has transpired over the period about your key performance indicators as enshrined in your Annual HSE Action Plan and comment on other interesting events that speak well about the HSE department.