Written by The modern era has been called the ‘age of information.’ Having all kinds of data at our fingertips
Is great, if we can avoid drowning in that ever-growing information tsunami.
To get a bit more specific, those who are expected to keep tabs on workplace EHS have new ways to slice and dice their stockpile of collected data, and view it in simple, visual, meaningful forms. Whether it’s leading, lagging, performance or usage data, different user groups benefit from having just the right mix.
The thing is, not everyone needs every possible data chart, configured every possible way. Having hundreds of chart, matrixes or KPI options is nice, but in most cases, people only really need what’s necessary to do their job. Which is why the all-inclusive analytics dashboards in some EHS platforms can suffocate users with too much detail. Unless they solve that problem by providing too little.
What if each stakeholder could have their own tailored dashboard, showing just the handful of charts they need to visualize data or drill into key data? Fortunately, that smart option is already available with today’s most advanced safety software.
Let’s look at three different roles, what they might be responsible for, and using Safety Indicators’ chart options as an example, what each of their safety analytics dashboards might look like.
ROLE A: Company Director or Manager
In this example, executives may be particularly concerned about injury stats at their plant. They’re interested in overall performance, which problem areas they need focus on, and how much employee time has been lost due to those incidents. An ‘Executive View’ dashboard, in this case, might include:
• Lost Workday KPI, to quickly see the total number of active recordable cases being managed within the organization, and to drill down to see who has an active path for a timely return to work.
• Incident Rate by Project, to show which projects or departments are responsible for the lion’s share of recordables, so they can investigate further for possible causes.
• Total Recordable Injury Rates (TRIR), to track the number of recordables each month against the total number of hours worked. Current trends can point to even bigger future issues.
Managers may also want to include a leading indicator like Observations Performed Per Hour Worked, to ensure that the organization stays ahead of future conditional and behavior risks..
ROLE B: EHS Staffer
Let’s say that the safety team has a special focus these days on accountability metrics regarding inspections. They want their safety analytics dashboard to help them stay on top of inspections by project, by inspector, and by type, to pinpoint any chronic gaps, both for safety purposes, and for compiling a more complete data set.
• An Audit Benchmark Set plots the performance of each project as a dot, relative to a diagonal line that indicates the preferred number of audits against the total number of hours worked.
• Inspections by Inspector is a spreadsheet that shows the total number of inspections that each inspector has begun, as well as how many are still open, to see who might be falling behind.
• Inspections by Type is a pie chart that indicates at a glance what types of inspections are being performed relative to other types.
ROLE C: Shop Supervisor
At this particular workplace, Supervisors have been trying to get through a backlog of corrective actions. They like having an overall picture of the progress and also want to monitor the performance of individual assignees. They especially need to zero in on any ‘past due’ tasks. Their dashboard might contain:
• A Completion KPI, to show the overall percentage of assigned tasks that have been completed.
• A Task Performance Grid, to check the number of open and closed tasks, with an overall score, for each assignee.
• A Pareto Chart of Tasks, which might be configured to show both Past Due and On-Time tasks as stacked bars.
These are all just examples.
Each company’s, and each stakeholder’s, circumstances, needs and priorities naturally vary. Which is why it’s important to have a wide variety of data chart types available, for selecting just the right ones to include in each individual’s safety analytics dashboard.
Safety Indicators, for example, offers hundreds of possibilities. Our Success Managers can help identify the ones that are the most helpful for each need. Stakeholders who have multiple areas of responsibility can simply have multiple analytics dashboards.
In fact, keeping things ‘simple’ for each role is the whole point of custom-configured dashboards. Because people overwhelmed by a platform’s data tend to stop using that platform – a disturbingly common occurrence which defeats the whole purpose.
Click here if you’d like to learn more about Safety Indicators configurable dashboards and how they’re used. If you’d prefer a personalized free demonstration of this advanced EHS software, sign up here.