As a safety professional, you start to focus on year-end safety reporting right about now. But to get the most out of your reports, you should implement systems well beforehand that ensure your data provides a solid foundation for meaningful reports. In this post, we give you the five keys to making your year-end safety reports as useful as possible. 

Are You Reporting Beyond the Basics? 

When you think of year-end safety reports, the regulatory reports are likely the ones that first come to mind, such as OSHA logs. But useful reporting goes well beyond basic incident and injury stats. 

Safety reporting should function as an evidence-based method of assessing the strengths and weaknesses of your program. “Evidence” means numbers, which you then use as the basis of your narrative. 

When preparing year-end reports, meeting regulatory obligations is the first priority, then come the reports to consumers and key stakeholders, and finally your KPI and other management reports for the leadership team. The data in your regulatory reports inform other reports, so it needs to be complete and accurate. It also needs to match what you’re reporting to your other stakeholders. 

There are five key factors you need to consider if you want to make your year-end safety reports as useful as possible: 

Is Your Data Complete?

One common issue that comes up when preparing these year-end data reports is missing data—OSHA recordable information or other stats. Missing data can skew your results and cause you to misreport the true performance of the safety program. 

The best way to avoid missing data is to implement an organized structure to collect data. Identify all of the locations and departments the data comes from so you don’t skip over any in the data-collection process. Consider whether you’re capturing data about all levels of incident severity. If not, how can you do better? You need the complete picture before you analyze the data and drive results from that data. 

Is Your Data Accurate?

Make sure you’re classifying the incidents accurately. Are you over-reporting or under-reporting OSHA recordables? Are you capturing enough detail in the records? Are you recording the exact nature of an incident, where it occurred, and the events leading up to it? 

Is Your Data Relevant? 

Are your statistics relevant to your business? Look at the specific performance-measurement goals and KPIs you set at the beginning of the year, such as Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR); Days Away, Restricted, or Transferred (DART); safety observations; near misses; or training completion. Make sure that what you’re reporting on speaks to your business and your constituents. What you measure should prove how you’re performing. 

Does Your Reporting Summarize Your Results? 

The purpose of year-end reporting is not just to report stats about injuries and illnesses, but to tell the story of what happened. For example, show how the results from this year compare to previous years. What are the trends? How did you perform when it comes to your beginning-of-the-year goals? What do you see as the program’s strengths and weaknesses? 

And when you tell the story, celebrate your key successes. You could give safety awards, celebrate systems that you implemented, and talk about the progress you’ve made on the safety program this year. Make it more than, “Here are the stats.” 

Is Your Reporting Actionable?

Does your report deliver insights and provide direction for the future? Maybe you’ve recognized some gaps in the data completeness. Goals you could set for the next year could be improving engagement or increasing the level of reporting. 

Safety professionals are not just focused on prevention, they’re focused on continuous improvement. You can always improve your programs and further safeguard your employees by being proactive. So your report should identify those key areas and actions you’ll take in the coming year. 

KPA Helps Businesses Take a Data-Driven Approach to Safety

KPA simplifies data visualization and reporting, giving users easy access to actionable insights into their EHS program performance. Your data is presented in real-time, so no delay or extra steps are required to access the information. The dashboards are configured based on features tailored to your business’s unique requirements, giving you the power to make informed decisions that impact workplace safety.

Let KPA show you how to take a data-driven approach to safety.