INSIGHT REPORT

CHECKLIST:
The 10 Leading Indicators
that Predict Employee
Safety Engagement
Contents
Introduction..................................................................... 1

Safety and Quality........................................................... 2

Increasing Engagement................................................... 4

Safety 4.0: Measuring What’s Difficult to Measure......... 4

The Safety Engagement Score........................................ 6

About the Author............................................................. 7

About Intelex................................................................... 7

Disclaimer
This material provided by Intelex Technologies, ULC is for is for informational purposes only. The material may include notification of regulatory activity, regulatory
explanation and interpretation, policies and procedures, and best practices and guidelines that are intended to educate and inform you with regard to EHSQ topics of
general interest. Opinions are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Intelex. The material is intended solely as guidance and you are
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institutions can freely reproduce this content for educational purposes.

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Introduction
The merger of today’s robust technology with new developments in safety
thinking has many organizations excited for what the future holds. Are you
ready to realize the benefits that await your organization when technology
and real-time data meet employee engagement and behavior?

Metrics are measures used to track, monitor, and gain an understanding

of the effectiveness of business processes. Though they do not appear to
be exciting aspects of the safety process, measuring and evaluating how
well your organization has implemented its safety management system
(SMS) can predict your organization’s success, and that IS exciting! “  Increasing a workforce’s level
From an organizational business perspective, workplace safety may be the
of engagement with safety
more common area where transformational change is best realized using practices is a key goal of
human capital. Safety is one part of the management system for which it is many organizations, because
easiest to gain “buy-in” from workers and the management team. Safety,
employee engagement in
regardless if you are the CEO or Chairman of the Board or the newest hire,
is almost always a shared value. Increasing a workforce’s level of
safety often is a predictor of
engagement with safety practices is a key goal of many organizations, employee engagement in the
because employee engagement in safety often is a predictor of employee success of the organization
engagement in the success of the organization as a whole.
as a whole.”
Therefore, using technology and data to predict employee engagement is
a way to determine the success of the organization. There is a tool you
can use to measure metrics related to employee engagement and the
impact that has on your SMS: The Intelex Safety Engagement Score. This
checklist contains the ten leading indicators utilized by the Safety
Engagement Score.

But first, a few words about Safety and Quality and how those two
functional areas of your organization can work together to create a
successful organizational culture.

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Safety and Quality
When workers perform their tasks with the proper mindset, one which takes into account
proper procedures and measures, the work environment becomes inherently safer and
production often becomes smoother as the result of less rework and fewer defects.
Thanks to new technologies that tap into the rich data streams organizations continually
collect and monitor, companies are discovering effective ways of increasing engagement
levels that have never been available before.

In the report “Integrating Quality and Safety in Organizational Culture,” author Graham
Freeman writes that, “In many industries, there is no clear boundary between safety and
quality cultures. They share many common traits, including requirements for employee
involvement, leadership commitment, and a strong mechanism to support organizational
learning. Additionally, quality failures and nonconformances that require rework have
been correlated with increased accidents and recordable injury rates in manufacturing
organizations. These injuries are frequently the result of fatigue, workplace pressure, and
the pressure from extra work due to quality failures.”

Employee
Involvement

Employee STRONG SAFETY Leadership

Job
Satisfaction
AND QUALITY Commitment

CULTURES

Organizational
Learning

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Freeman offers safety and quality culture best practices from a review of several
industries, including construction, nuclear, petroleum, and healthcare, among them:
• A strong organizational culture consists of people, tools, and processes.
Automation and software are a pivotal element of that formula, but they cannot
solve everything. Organizations must remember that people, and the culture of
which they are a part, will always be an important component of an
organization’s systems.
• Humans are the most common point of failure in a complex system, but an
organization with a strong culture must know how to encourage and promote
human behavior that focuses on the principles of safety and quality and works
to avoid errors and failure.
• High-reliability organizations (HROs) know that failures are the culmination of
errors that accumulate in places where we least expect them and give off
warning signals over time. “A strong organizational culture of quality and safety
must be attuned to those signals and know how to act on them before they

“  Standards such as ISO

grow into failures,” says Freeman.
• Standards such as ISO 9001:2015 and frameworks like the Baldrige
Performance Excellence Program are authoritative sources that can guide
9001:2015 and
organizations in their goal of establishing strong quality and safety cultures.
• Communication, leadership engagement, and situational awareness are
frameworks like the
fundamentally important principles in any organization, and workers at every Baldrige Performance
level must understand and embody those principles. A strong culture to Excellence Program are
support both quality and safety is vital for ensuring that an organization will
authoritative sources
thrive as it meets its day-to-day responsibilities, and that it not only survives
but grows in response to unforeseen circumstances and crises. that can guide
The idea of “human capital” comes to mind as we consider culture change and
organizations in their
even cultural transformation. According to Scott Gaddis, VP and global practice goal of establishing
lead for Health and Safety at Intelex Technologies, “This term is defined as strong quality and
production factors coming from workers that are used to produce goods or
safety cultures.”
provide services. In other words, and critical to transformational change, it is the
collection of all that makes the process successful. It is the workers’ knowledge,
abilities, talents, skills, intelligence, training, judgment, and experience as well as
their wisdom, individuality, and connectedness.”

When everyone from the CEO to the newest hire comes to work each day
recognizing how important the corporate culture of safety is to them and their
colleagues, as well as the impact their behaviors and attitudes have in creating
that culture, the numbers of fatalities, injuries, near misses, and production errors
invariably start to plummet.

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Increasing Engagement
Increasing engagement—like building culture—is easier said than done.
Competing priorities, such as challenging production goals, unforgiving supply
chain schedules, and other factors tied directly to the bottom line, can have a
negative impact on safety practices, either directly (“Get it done!”) or indirectly (“If
we miss that shipping date…”).

“People are the foundation of a culture of quality. Organizations that focus on

efficiency and defect elimination through the use of quality tools must avoid the
danger of neglecting the individuals who build and support the culture on a daily
basis,” wrote Freeman. When workers are neglected or safety issues ignored in
favor of production, the culture of the organization suffers.

Fortunately, robust new technologies and modern workplace health and safety
approaches like Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) are providing
companies with a greater ability than ever before to increase engagement levels
across the enterprise. By leveraging data that readily is available in today’s
information-driven “Industry 4.0” era, organizations are able to see deep into their
operations to recognize meaningful operational patterns and adjust their practices
before tragedies occur.

Safety 4.0: Measuring What’s Difficult to Measure

With the right device, hub, and platform ecosystem, monitoring of the safety
management system can be done in real-time or near real-time. Safety 4.0 is the
key to advances we are making as we help EHS professionals in their digital
transformation of safety. It’s about process, engagement, culture, and mobilizing
data, and we are only beginning to understand the potential ahead of us.

“As we enter the 2020s, all of the knowledge we’ve gathered about safety
management systems—observations, audits, and leading indicators such as
training and employee engagement, trending patterns of injury and illness rates,
tracking near misses—can be collected, stored, evaluated, sliced, diced, and used
to drive EHSQ performance using the tools found in Industry 4.0. These tools
include cloud computing, predictive analytics, wearables, and machine learning,”
said Gaddis and Sandy Smith, Global Content Lead, Intelex Technologies, in IIoT
and the Continuing Evolution of Safety Management Systems. “As Baby Boomers
retire, the workforce is shifting to a generation of workers who grew up with the
Internet and who rely on smart devices for information, news, and socialization.
EHSQ professionals need to keep up by utilizing the tools found in IIoT.”

Predictive analytics help companies turn the data they collect into actionable
information that can improve safety outcomes. The process of analyzing the data
uncovers leading indicators—such as training hours and types, safety
observations, participation in safety-related activities, and communication—and
can even help build predictive models that can help determine future risk.

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The Intelex Insight Report Safety Engagement—From Lagging to Leading to
Transformational Change takes an in-depth look at how metrics can be used
within this new landscape to improve engagement and, ultimately, drive better
safety results.

As an example, you may pursue metrics to improve training in your organization.

“Quantitative measures could include things like the number of training lessons
completed, the time required, drop-off rates, operational efficiencies after
training, as well as knowledge and skills attainment. Qualitative measures, on
the other hand, may support these actions by learning if a team or individual
behavior changed because of the training. Did work value increase? Were the
trainees satisfied with the trainer or did they even value the training?” asked
Gaddis, who authored the report. “As you can gather, even things that cannot be
easily measured still have an impact on reaching your overall goals and could
affect strategy.”

Gaddis also discusses how Intelex’s Safety Engagement Score can help
organizations get a clear understanding of how their safety efforts stack up across
various locations and departments and how they can gain insight into where they
can improve.

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The Safety Engagement Score
The Intelex Safety Engagement Score measures ten leading indicators from across your organization and
shows your progress on the journey to meeting the objectives of improvement and stability.

The list below shows the ten leading indicators. If you measure and benchmark against them, you can
determine the success of your Safety Management System and judge how engaged your employees are in
your safety success. How many can you check off?

LEADING QUESTION YES NO

INDICATOR
Investigations are promptly investigated.
Incident Investigations
Investigations are performed and completed on schedule.
Audits Audits are conducted on a scheduled basis.
Corrective Actions Corrective actions are completed.
Safe Observations Employees report safety concerns and observations.
Unsafe behavioral observations are reported.
Unsafe Observations
Follow-ups and mitigation completed.
Safety training is completed to plan.
Training Management
Employees receive general and task-specific training.
Corrective actions are added to the system from across the
system platform.
Action Management
Corrective actions are monitored.
Corrective actions are completed on time.
Job Safety Analyses are conducted to identify hazards and report
Workplace Hazards them.
Mitigation plans are created and documented.
Meetings Management Safety meetings are completed to plan for all employees.
Safety documentation is reviewed.
Information Distribution
Safety communications are delivered to plan.

If you answered “Yes” to all or most of these questions, then you’re well on your journey towards employee
engagement and safety excellence.

If you are an Intelex customer and want to discover your Safety Engagement Score—and determine your
top-performing locations, the ones with greater risk, and the areas where your organization needs to devote
resources—speak with your Customer Success representative. If you are not a customer but want more
information about the Safety Engagement Score, send us an email at intelex@intelex.com and put Safety
Engagement Score Tool in the subject line!

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About the Author
SANDY SMITH
Sandy Smith, Global Content Lead, Intelex Technologies, ULC, is an award-winning newspaper reporter and
business-to-business journalist who has spent 20+ years researching and writing about EHSQ and networking
with EHSQ professionals. She is passionate about helping them become leaders in building and maintaining
safe workplaces and participate in creating workplace cultures that promote and support EHSQ.

About Intelex
Intelex Technologies, ULC is a global leader in environmental, health, safety, and quality (EHSQ)
management software. Since 1992, Intelex employees across the globe have been committed to
innovating and enabling organizations to send their employees home safely every day, leave behind a
more sustainable world to the generations that follow, and manage quality so that only the safest and
highest quality products make it to market. Intelex’s scalable, web-based platform and applications
have helped clients across all industries improve business performance, mitigate organization-wide
risk, and ensure sustained compliance with internationally accepted standards (e.g., ISO 9001, ISO
14001, ISO 45001 and OHSAS 18001) and regulatory requirements. Over 1,100 customers in 172
countries trust Intelex to power their EHSQ initiatives. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada with
regional offices and employees around the world, Intelex became an Industrial Scientific company in
2019. For more information about Intelex, please visit www.intelex.com.

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