Safety Performance Measure

CHAPTER TWO

SAFETY PERFORMANCE MEASURE – AN OVERVIEW

2.1        INTRODUCTION

The concept of safety performance is very broad and involves different complexities as a result of different opinions of researchers about it. Researchers have proposed different views to the concept based on their understanding and approach to how safety performance should been viewed conceptually and measured.  This diverse view has reflected in the various definitions of safety performance that have been proposed. In order to understand this concept, this research will focus on notable definitions that have been proposed by scholars in safety science as a background to the discussion on this concept.

Researchers in the occupational safety domain have investigated safety performance and safety related components of general job performance for the last two decades of the last century (Komaki et al 1980; Clarke 2006; Cohen and Jensen 1984; Reber et al 1990).  Many of these studies focus on safety regulations which trained public utilities workers on proper use of equipment and tools, proper use of personal protective equipment, housekeeping and general safety procedures (Reber et al 1990).

In recent years however, safety performance have been conceptualised as multi-dimensional in occupational safety research literature. For instance, the difference between safety compliance and safety participation was introduced by Neal and Griffin (2000). Safety performance has also been conceptualised as supervisors’ observation of the incidence of engaging in trained safety behaviours (Dearmond et al 2011). Subsequent studies, Hopkins, (2009); Hinze et al (2013); Stough (2012); Sinelnikov et al (2015) have also viewed safety performance from active and passive measures before developing a framework that combines both for improved safety management system. Current research position in safety performance is the development of framework that combines both active and passive performance measures. These active and passive measures has also been referred to as leading and lagging safety indicators for measuring safety performance (Sinelnikov et al 2015; Øien et al 2011; Reiman and Pietikainen 2012).

This paper will present a systematic approach to how safety performance is measured and the detail will include definition of safety performance, safety performance measures and the process of measuring safety performance, which entails discussion on safety compliance and safety participation, issues in safety performance as well as application of safety performance with respect to active and passive performance measure dichotomy. This will further leads to the concept of safety performance indicators as a foundation for current safety measures.