Focused Risk Assessments to Eliminate Serious Injuries and Fatalities (SIFs)

Let’s start with some critical data points: 

• In 2021, there was an 8.9% increase (compared to 2020) in the number of Serious Injuries and Fatalities (SIFs) that were reported to OSHA
• The number of fatal injuries at work spiraled up to 5,190 in 2021 up from 4,764 in 2020

All of this is happening despite greater awareness and efforts to build safer workplaces. Why is this happening?

The CQ Solutions team was recently at a safety conference organized by ASSP and the above topic was a major point of discussion. There was unanimous agreement that the risks associated with SIFs have to be addressed immediately with a fool-proof approach.

A ‘Must-Have’: Proactive approach to eliminate SIFs with data at the core

At ComplianceQuest, we recently published a Whitepaper on this topic titled ‘7 Best Practices to Minimize and Eliminate Serious Injuries and Fatalities (SIFs)’. In the paper, we touched upon the following aspects:

• The irony of how SIFs were increasing, despite a decrease in overall safety incidents
• Why the key to eliminating SIFs revolves around building systems and processes to identify precursors
• Why all near-misses (or minor incidents) are not the same. These have to be analyzed in detail to see if there are any gaps in the safety process that can lead to a potential SIF
• Proactive steps must be taken to spot ‘early warning signs’

The Role of Risk Assessments

Safety leaders are now putting in place automated processes and using data to conduct thorough risk assessments. During the risk assessment lifecycle, specific steps are being taken to analyze whether a near-miss, safety observation, or minor incident has the potential to become a SIF.

For instance, there was a minor incident involving a piece of equipment on the shop floor at an auto component manufacturing firm in Michigan. Because of a flaw in the maintenance process, there were a few over-sharp edges, which resulted in minor injuries. The plant team set up processes to ensure people were wearing gloves and PPEs while using that machine. Safety training was established to ensure people don’t take their hands close to those sharp edges.

However, a robust CAPA and Root Cause Analysis process wasn’t run. The plant team assumed the issue was with the sharp edge on that single machine and ineffective training.

However, a few months later, there was a serious injury to another worker (from another machine) in the same plant. At that point, a root cause analysis (RCA) was run and the safety team spotted a gap in the preventive maintenance of machines at this plant. If a risk assessment and RCA had been done during the earlier minor injury (caused by the sharp edge) this serious injury could have been prevented.

There needs to be a robust process that goes from risk assessment, CAPA and RCA, implementation of controls, and ongoing monitoring - all with data at the core.

Identifying Precursors: A critical first step

In the whitepaper, we wrote about how a robust analysis of every minor incident, near-miss, and safety observation for precursors is a key first step in the process of eliminating SIFs.

The three key aspects of precursors are that they are high-risk situations in which management controls are: absent or ineffective or not complied with. If the situation is not allowed rectified, it can lead to SIF.

​​Safety leaders must watch out for the following three indicators of SIF:

• Normalization of deviation
• Uncalibrated risk perception/tolerance
• Changes that have safety implications and are not driven by empirical data

To prevent precursors from becoming SIF-causing incidents, safety leaders must:

• Analyze historical data of incidents - both those that caused injury and those that did not
• Track leading indicators to assess their potential to convert into safety events

Therefore, keep in mind the above aspects while designing your risk assessment initiatives.

For a deeper understanding of the 7 best practices to prevent and eliminate SIFs, download the whitepaper here: https://www.compliancequest.com/whitepaper/best-practices-to-minimize-and-eliminate-injuries-and-fatalities/