Chapter 4
Give context to your report
Though brevity is important, so is providing enough background to help leaders understand the data you report.
Louise Ward is Safety and Sustainability Director at freight operators G&W for UK and Europe and has previously held top safety posts at Thames Water and Siemens. She says senior leaders faced with raw safety indicators:
“Look at them and nod sagely, and if they spot something in red they look concerned and say ‘we must do something about it’. But they have not been trained in the interpretation of safety statistics, they have come from commercial or finance or sales backgrounds so, as the experts, we have to steer them.”
Alastair Davey goes even further:
“I would explain the different rates to them – I even put the definitions on slides. You take it for granted they will know what a Lost Time Incident Rate (LTIR) is, but they probably don’t.”
Graphic representations of data are preferable to raw numbers, with trend lines and highlighting to ensure leaders’ attention is drawn to the most important information.
“It should be very clear what’s good and what’s bad just by looking,” notes Louise Ward.
Davey notes that the concept of the safety triangle, first proposed by H.W. Heinrich, is a useful one to teach senior leaders. It helps them visualize the healthy ratio of near-miss reporting to minor incidents, and the small point of serious injuries at the triangle’s apex:
“Then you can point out if the ratio is not looking right, and say ‘In this division the bottom of the triangle is missing, there’s not enough reporting – we need action from the line [management]!’”
