The importance of performance indicators in occupational safety and health management - a review

Abstract

Reports on the incidence of accidents at work in Romania show that there is poor management of injury risks, and the component called management has a defining role, which is why performance indicators can be used to increase performance in occupational OSH (occupational safety and health) management and implicitly contribute to reduce the number of accidents and occupational diseases. The paper is a review that aims to perform an analysis of key performance indicators (KPIs) given the relevance of the indicators used in the field of OSH. The first part includes the current use of these indicators and a summary of their effectiveness in the field, which presents lagging performance indicators applicable to OSH, which can measure the results of activities carried out and leading indicators, which are proactive, preventive and predictive, to provide information about the performance of the management system in the field. In the second part, using the survey method for which the research tool is a questionnaire with 10 items, an analysis is performed to test the relationship between the two types of performance indicators. Finally, the results obtained highlighted the existence of direct correlations between the types of selected indicators, but also the existence of limits on their use.