Tuesday, September 3, 2013

RIF – Breaking Through Safety Performance Plateaus

This is an excerpt from an ISHN blog post.

RIF, Recordable Injury Frequency, the worldwide standard for judging safety performance, is often talked about as inadequate, but in actuality is seldom, if ever, replaced. Why use this concept?

  • RIF is reactionary, not proactive 
  • RIF doesn’t give a hint as to what you should do differently to improve safety 
  • Why incent RIF performance when all it does is lead to hiding injuries and thus impede progress in resolving the recurring issues that should be addressed 
  • RIF means nothing to the front line worker where the risks are lived with every day
  • We have all heard these arguments and more. Yet we keep slogging down this same old road expecting a different result, the classic definition of insanity.

A group of safety professionals recently met with the executive safety leadership of a Fortune 50 company that was struggling with the RIF plateau. A number of years back when their injury numbers were higher they attacked the RIF culture that existed, solved many conditional and regulatory issues and took a steep drop in RIF and its associated costs.

The full article is available at ISHN.com.

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