Jerry Muller wrote a phenomenal book called the Tyranny of Metrics, which he opens by saying "the title is not meant to convey the message that metrics are intrinsically tyrannical, but rather that they are frequently used in ways that are dysfunctional and oppressive". And that, by friends, is a fitting way to begin this awesome dialogue about safety indicators and metrics. Let's begin.
"Help me get people engaged". "No one is engaged with health and safety". "Engagement around here is pretty low". Requests like this and their variations are some of the most common things people come to me for help with. Health and safety have an engagement problem, but it's not limited to that. Gallup says only 36% of workers in the US are engaged at work. And no one agrees on how we define engagement in any case. What do we do?