Usage of individual performance indicators as occupational accidents traceability and predictability data Ph.D.

Iorga Ionel General Manager of the Romanian National Research Institute on Occupational Safety INCDPM Alexandru Darabont / iorga@protectiamuncii.ro Ph.D.Kovacs tefan The Romanian National Research Institute on Occupational Safety INCDPM Alexandru Darabont /stefan_agk@yahoo.com ABSTRACT Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are used relatively frequently in the assessment and benchmarking processes, considering their role to express certain situation through reporting to the business process. Process safety uses a lot of KPI to describe different safety aspects. Individual Key Performance Indicators could describe the performance of the employee together with his/hers wellbeing at the workplace. This kind of KPIs could be collected by the employees, by their supervisors and line management and also by the HR specialist inside the enterprise. In this paper, we describe a research performed by INCDPM, research regarding the development of a safety management system using KPIs as occupational accidents traceability and predictability data. The system improves significantly the safety management inside the enterprise by focusing on the individual employee and its safety performance expressed through KPIs.A number of 50 KPIs were developed for this research, KPIs could be then clustered in order to have a global safety image at the workplace, or aggregated- to have an accurate safety image for the employee. Keywords Key Performance Indicators, Work Safety, System integration INTRODUCTION An effective set of enterprise key indicators could provide feedback to individuals, groups, and the enterprise, directing the behaviour of all. Measures of performance have been used by management for centuries to review current operational capabilities. Chan (2004) has shown that such measures have been used to assess both departmental and corporate performance, as well as trend performance achieved against plan. The problem, as discussed by Mcneeney (2005) was to choose the right indicators for the right job. Generally (Eurocontrol, 2006; CCG, 2008; Ngo, 2010) these measurements are related to safety (number of incidents), environmental (number of releases), costs (percentage of departmental budgets used), and production (comparison of actual vs. targeted production output), being needed in order to determine not only if resources and costs have been managed for the production achieved, but also whether the assets or plant remain in good health. In order to define a complete set of performance measures, companies must ensure that simple, workable measures are in place. The real challenge is not only to select those indicators that satisfy budgetary goals, but also to build the activities needed to meet the levels of asset performance required to meet strategic goals.

Selecting the right measures is vital for effectiveness. Even more importantly, the metrics must be built into a performance measurement system that allows individuals and groups to understand how their behaviours and activities are fulfilling the overall corporate goals. Such tools (Ouchi, 2001; Kennedy, 2002, O Neill, 2007, Nguyen, 2010) are in various stages of development. Key performance indicators (KPIs) could be considered as the simple metrics that can be used to evaluate individual behavior (and also business data) against business goals. KPIs are a central way of presenting business intelligence for an organization. Also known as status indicators or scorecards, KPIs evaluate business data against business goals and display current status by using easy-to-understand graphical indicators. KPIs increase the speed and efficiency of evaluating progress against key business goals. Without KPIs, employees and business managers would have to painstakingly extract performance data and evaluate that data against goals, and then spend the time to present that data in a separate report for business decision makers. It is difficult to get timely status without a way to quickly and automatically evaluate live data. With KPIs, users who want to find out current performance can look quickly at a report in their business site, or even see relevant indicators in their personal sites. Each KPI gets a single value from a data source, either from a single property or by calculating averages across the selected data, and then compares that value against a preselected value. Because values are calculated across a range of data rather than displaying data in list form, KPIs tend to be more useful when measuring performance across groups or projects. However, by calculating a range of data for a specific person, such as a list of sales for a single employee, a KPI can evaluate individual performance(RapidBi, 2010). Individual safety performance could also be evaluated using individual KPIs or individual performance indicators (IPIs). KPIs could be equalled with IPIs as long as no key indicators could be defined exactly so we are using the term KPI or IKPI (Individual Key Performance Indicators) in this paper. The paper presents a complex system to define IKPIs, cluster and aggregate them in order to perform occupational accident (occupational risk) trasability and predictibilityas a step forward in risk management. An agreeement between employers and employee to reward a safety behaviour and to correct an unsafety one, could be based entirely on a KPI (IKPI) system that would identify, pursue, assess and analyse individual KPI To use KPIs, you must first define them and create a KPI list.

BUILDING SAFETY PERFORMANCE METRICS AND KPIs The metrics being developed must sustain the strategic goals of the company, two of these main goals being the loss and incident reduction as shown by recent research (Cox, 2003;PI, 2010;Jackson ,2010). Therefore, when building performance metrics, the process must begin with the end result in mind. We need to focus on what we want as outcomes of our work processes. One major outcome would be to improve the safety performance parameters of the individual worker. By being tracked in a number of KPIs the worker is aware on his/hers responsibilities and would play safe in order to not be substandard reported to KPIs From this strategic goal, perspectives have been defined which are specific to three functions: Operations, Loss Control, and Safety and Environmental. The Operations

perspective follows the maximization of the results being at the same time ALARP. Loss control follows the minimization of loss, Safety follows the minimization of incidents and the desire to stop them to become accidents, Environment is followed in connexion with the durable development. From each of these perspectives, tactical metrics can be set to stimulate new outcomes, build new processes, and build skill development and learningall with clear links to the goals of each individual perspective. Now the value of performance improvements can be easily seen and used to drive changes in functional behaviours and functional interactions. Metrics that build upon individual perspective goals need to be mapped from the lowerlevel operational measure to higher-level strategic measures. For example, within the Operations perspective, a strategic KPI candidate could be Skill upgrade. Improvements in this metric will result in a better work process and a better quality of the output. In order to built an effective unexpected event (materialized in loss and/or incidents/accidents) traceability and predictability instrument we have selected a number of 50 primary KPIs that could be estimated by the management, by the supervisors or by the worker by himself. From these 50 KPIs we have selected for this paper the most important ones, the worker Satisfaction Index, the Continuous Improvement (through a continuous learning process) Index and also the Behaviour Index. The idea is simple; a good satisfaction leads towards the desire of continuous improvement and also towards a good behaviour. The behaviour could also be influenced by the immediate physical and psychical state of the worker and also by the accidentogen and loss trends. The figure 1 shows all these elements assembled in what we called the Individual KPI engine. It is the starting point in using KPI to track future safety problems and predict also undesired outcomes. There is a strategic perspective built around the three main elements, Operations, Loss Control and Safety which influences all the metrics definitions (Tanaka, 2004). There is also a tactical perspective that involves the primary KPIs or PKPIs which could be directly assessed (for example, the Accidentogen Trend through the number of incidents which were started by the worker or in which the worker was involved or the Loss Trend through the value of loss/worker) or which could be assessed through the worker input (for example the Satisfaction Index which could be introduced by the worker at the end of every workday) or through the direct supervisor input (the Behaviour) or through the Continuous Improvement (Continuous Learning).The Satisfaction Index is influencing directly the Continuous Improvement and also the Behaviour.

Figure 1 The Individual Key Performance Engine

As with many management issues, it is often best to build an individual KPI solution in stages. Suggested stages for performance indicators are: 1. Define the links between corporate goals and major operational perspectives. 2. Map these strategic links to required processes in each perspective area. 3. Define a set of near-term and medium-term metrics which drive the new outcomes in each perspective. 4. Define the gaps and dependencies across the organization which will need to be bridged to result in corporate success. 5. Identify the people which could decisively influence this bridge. 6. Obtain the cooperation of these people in order to be KPI-zed. 7. Develop an integrated track system 8. Implement the metrics, follow the feedback and monitor to secure the strategic results. In order to evaluate the KPIs there must be a very simple and understandable system which should allow the (auto)assessment also by the worker (for satisfaction), superviser (for behavior) or specialized HR services.This system was built using as reference scale the Likert scale, with a range of values between 0(worst) to 5

(excellent).Using this scale we could put together different types of values in the ideea of performing trasability and predictibility.

THE KPI FRAMEWORK Using an Artificial Intelligence methodology, the individual KPI could be seen as a knowledge island, stating specific knowledge regarding a certain human attribute. This knowledge island could be actually built as a knowledge structure, with figure 2 presenting the basic KPI framework. There are 2 main interfaces (beyond the Administrator interface). -The input interface collects the instant value of the KPI (for example satisfaction index on 12.03.2010 is 4), indicates if the worker agreed with the KPI and also indicates the KPI state. It could be: -Closed: The KPI is set up at a specific value (for example, over 25 years for a KPI that expresses the age at the workplace) -Upgraded; -In pursuit: for a KPI that is continuously estimated, like the behaviour of the worker; -Non-applicable;

Figure 2 Basic KPI frameworks

KPI PROCESSMENT KPI could be processed in two ways. -1.Through clustering. A KPI cluster is done for a workplace or for a small enterprise, including the analysis of KPIs from more than one worker. For example, we could use a Behaviour cluster which could indicate the global behaviour of the work team at the workplace. If this behaviour is below 3 it is possible to predict the apparition of unexpected events very soon. Another interesting cluster could be the Satisfaction index cluster. If the Satisfaction index at the workplace is below 2.5 then it could be stressed that the workers at that workplace have not the necessary incentives in order to perform correspondingly and sooner or later could appear work problems (not necessary accidents).Figure 3 shows the general clustering concepts.

Figure 3 Clustering concepts

Clustering could be performed: -over time: on regular time intervals yearly for example; -over specific situations- for example, on overload; Clustering gives:

-traceability, considering the permanent improvement of team knowledge through the improvement of every team member and also the behaviour as a team; these two terms are closely connected- as a better knowledge leads towards a better team behaviour; -Prediction- regarding team behaviour inter-connected with work satisfaction at the workplace. We found in our research that if there is no work satisfaction we could speak of a team just in case of emergencies-beyond that there is a minimum of interaction if there is no work satisfaction. This could lead directly to the stop of personal improvement and of knowledge improvement-leading finally to a dangerous behaviour. It is possible to develop scenarios using this prediction tool based on KPIs. For example, if there is work satisfaction then there would be also a desire to know more, to improve them through knowledge- this would lead to a permanent behaviour as a team and also towards a proper behaviour and not a dangerous one. This is shown in figure 4 as a KPI based scenario tree

Figure 4 KPI based scenario tree -2.Through

aggregation Clustering is taking into account the whole work team. Aggregation is analysing the KPIs of the individual team member. There is a close connection between the satisfaction index, the desire to improve and behaviour also for the individual member of the team. Here is interesting to analyse the accidentogen and loss trends affecting the individual. If there is a pronounced accidentogen trend then the behaviour of the person would be erratic at best, with an over-caution on every performed action. If there is a pronounced loss trend then the worker would not be allowed by the supervisor to perform very much, being left without the necessary experience. A generic aggregation schema-and KPi analysis-is presented in figure 5.

Figure 5 KPI aggregation

OBTAINED RESULTS A structure of more than 50 individual KPIs, based on specific risk ontology was developed accordingly with the presented aspects. We are testing this system in two SMEs, each with 200 employees, in Bucharest. The processing of these KPIs is very simple. Some KPIs, like the Sa tisfaction Index (for the day being worked) are introduced by the employees at the end of the day of work. Some other KPI like the Behaviour are introduced by the supervisors at the end of the work week together with data regarding weeks loss or produced incidents. At the end of the trimester, the system is generating a safety topic map, indicating the global KPI image for each working place and also indicating the safety trend- computed as an ponder ate average of individual KPIs for every worker. Such a safety topic map for the first trimester of a furniture making SME, Assembly workplace is presented in figure 6.

Figure 6. Safety topic map

CONCLUSIONS

This paper shows the most interesting aspects regarding a safety tracking and predictability system based on individual key performance indicators. This research is under development at the Romanian National Research Institute on Occupational Safety, being tested at this moment in two different enterprises. This system could be implemented and used in the enterprises regardless of their activity and of their number of employees in order to control loss at workplace and to manage efficiently risks. Also, by implementing this system and by making the employees to understand the importance of KPI collection and analysis at the workplace a powerful and optimal safety culture could be built in the enterprise. Some of the KPi are introduced directly by the employee (like the Satisfaction Index). Other KPI are defined by the workplace supervisor, by the HR manager and also by the line and top management. Some primary KPI like loss or incidents are data resulting from the day to day activity collected by the management and connected to a specific employee who is responsible for the loss or for the incident occurrence. The main problem- and blessing- of the Individual Key Performance Indicators (IKPI) is that they must be transparent. The employee should be informed at regular intervals how she or he performed taking safety into account, the eventual problems (identified and showed by the Safety Topic Maps) should be discussed and decisions should be made in order to improve the situation. Through the improvement of IKPI there are solved not just the safety problems but a lot of other things, the most important being- in our opinion, the satisfaction of the employee at the workplace (which leads to the continuous improvement of the quality of the work results and outputs) and also the behavior problem. An unpredictable behavior leads to a loose gun at workplace which could lead to a lot of troubles. In dealing with KPI based safety management the just culture concept must be considered at every moment. The non-intentional wrong behavior must not be punished necessarily but the employee with this behavior must be trained correspondingly in order to change its behavior, the training must be tested and retested before the worker is allowed back to work. The social responsible management is not exactly a new concept but is a very powerful one, the cooperation between the management and the employees being the key to success. Individual safety and work satisfaction monitoring and management (traceability and prediction being included in this management) through KPI could be an efficient way in order to assure a desired level of stability and efficiency at the workplace.

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