Module 7:

Measuring performance

Always position the cursor at the top of the

slide to progress easily through the
presentation. Click to enter Module 7.

• Explain to delegates that you’re about to start Module 7.

123
This is the introduction slide for Module 7. Click
to move on to the next slide.

• Briefly discuss the key learning points with delegates. Note: they’re phrased as
questions so that you can ask delegates to answer them at the end of the module.

• The key learning points are listed in the workbook (page 131). Note: There’s space
in the workbook for delegates to add notes if they want to, or if you’d like to provide
them with additional key learning points. Encourage delegates to make notes
throughout.

124
This slide shows the first key learning point.
Click to move on to the next slide.

• The slide shows that the following slides relate to this first key learning point. (You
can expand around the key learning point if you want.)

125
This slide explains that although we may not
realise it, we measure performance in all
aspects of our lives. Click to move on to the
next slide.

• Explain to delegates that they know why they need to manage health and safety,
what they have to do and how they can do it. They’ve also covered how they can
learn when things go wrong. But do they know how they’re doing overall? Is this year
the same as last, is it worse or is it better? Remember the football team in Module 4.
They measured their performance by matches won, drawn and lost, and their league
position. The best way to find out is to set some indicators that allow us to keep an
eye on how we’re doing in health and safety terms.

• Although we may not realise it, measuring performance is important in all aspects of
our lives, at leisure and at work. For example, if we play sport, we can measure our
performance by the number of games we win, lose or draw. At work, our
performance is assessed by our manager against agreed criteria.

• To help explain what we mean by performance indicators we’re now going to use an
easy analogy of a lorry driver.

126
This slide introduces performance indicators.

Explain to delegates that performance indicators provide them with information on:

• what’s going on around us

• what’s happened so far
• potential problems or dangers that we may need to respond to.

• Ask delegates to think about driving a lorry.

• Note: There’s space in the workbook for delegates to add their own notes (page
132).

• Explain to delegates that the speedometer

gives information on speed and allows us
to make adjustments to deal with current
speed limits. Similarly, the fuel and oil
gauges provide information that allows us
to take action before the lorry stops
working because it’s run out.

• Click to show that in this situation the

tachograph gives us information on the
distance and hours travelled.

127
 • Click to show that the satellite navigation
system provides information on our
proposed route and any delays that crop
up.

• Click to show that some indicators give us

information on the outcomes of our actions
(in this case driving), such as the distance
we’ve travelled and the number of hours
we’ve been driving. We tend to refer to
these measures or indicators as
‘reactive’.

• Click to show that other indicators give us

information about the current situation that
might impact on future performance, such
as speed and traffic flow. We tend to refer
to these measures or indicators as
‘proactive’. Both types of indicators are
important.

• Click to move on to the next slide.

Reactive indicators provide information on the outcomes of our past actions.

Proactive indicators provide information about aspects of the current situation that may
affect performance in the future. These indicators measure the inputs to the process
that will affect future outcomes. In the lorry driving example, the speedometer, the fuel
gauge and the satellite navigation system all provide information that can be used to
arrive at the destination efficiently and safely.

128
This slide asks delegates to imagine they own
a stationery business.

• Explain to delegates that it’s good practice to develop performance measures that
match organisational or departmental objectives. There’s not much point developing
indicators that tell them about something that’s not really important to their
organisation or department.

• Ask delegates to imagine that they’re

managers of a business selling stationery
supplies. They aim to offer quality products
and service to their customers so that they
achieve customer satisfaction. What sort of
information would help measure business
performance?

• Explain to delegates that monthly sales will

tell them the outcome of their efforts –
from these they can see whether there are
any variations in the sales figures and,
importantly, they can determine their profit
(and loss). This gives a measure of their
bottom line. However, this information
doesn’t give the full picture. If they also
collect information about the number of
deliveries made on time, the number and
nature of customer complaints, the number
of new accounts opened and the number
of enquiries answered within 24 hours,
they’ll also get information about how their
business is doing. Then they’ll have the
chance to respond to a potential problem,
such as a deterioration in service delivery.

• Click to move on to the next slide.

129
Advantages of proactive performance indicators:

While reactive indicators give us important information about the final outcomes of our
activities, they often don’t provide information on our actions and, importantly, our
success. Here are some reasons why reactive indicators may not be enough:

1. there’s a time delay between the actions we take and outcomes – reactive indicators
may give us the information too late for us to respond. For example, by the time we
notice a problem that’s causing loss of sales, it may be too late to avoid laying off
staff
2. they don’t explain why you have a particular outcome
3. if the outcome being measured is low, for example when quality is good and errors
are low, they don’t provide enough feedback for managing our actions
4. if the outcomes being measured are extreme, we can’t wait for it to happen to find
out whether our actions are going wrong
5. they may not reveal underlying issues that could result in serious consequences. For
example, just because quarterly sales figures are acceptable doesn’t mean that all is
well – a client could take their custom elsewhere before you review the figures.

• Explain to delegates before you click to the next slide that they’ve now completed
the first key learning point: what’s performance measurement about?

• If you think it’s necessary and you have time, you could at this point review what the
delegates have just learned.

130
This slide shows the second key learning point.
Click to move on to the next slide.

• Use this slide to highlight that you’re now moving on to the next key learning point.

131
The slide gives a visual introduction to
measuring health and safety performance.
Click to move on to the next slide.

• Explain to delegates that just as in the previous examples, we have two ways of
getting information about health and safety performance – reactive and proactive
measurement.

• To demonstrate how reactive and proactive measurement works, delegates need to

imagine that they are a manager of an industrial kitchen.

132
This slide introduces reactive measurement.

• Explain to delegates that reactive measurement focuses on collecting information on

the outcomes of their health and safety management system, including accidents,
incidents, ill health, the absence of these negative events, and the number of days
without an accident or incident.

• Note: There’s space in the workbook for delegates to add their own notes (page
133).

• Click to show the chef burning himself on

the frying pan.

• Click to show the sous-chef looking under

pressure because there are too many
orders. This in turn can lead to shortcuts
and injuries.

133
 • Click to show that in this scenario they’ve
recorded 16 days without a workplace
injury.

• Click to move on to the next slide.

We define health and safety as the absence of danger from which harm could result.
Health and safety performance can be measured in terms of the harm (injury, ill health)
that occurs, while success in health and safety management can be measured through
the absence of losses, such as injury and ill health. Measuring health and safety in this
way tells us about the outputs of health and safety management – in other words, they
give us a ‘bottom-line’ measure of health and safety performance.

Collecting information on injuries and ill health is relatively easy. Organisations are
required by law to report certain types of injuries and ill health to the enforcing
authorities and should be gathering this type of information anyway. However, gathering
information on minor injuries and non-injury incidents is more challenging, as these
occurrences can easily go unreported in an organisation.

Analysing injury and illness information can provide useful insights into the type and
severity of these occurrences and allows organisations to identify which aspects of their
work activities need targeted improvement.

134
This slide shows how to calculate an
organisation’s injury incidence rate.

• Explain to delegates that calculating their injury incidence rate is useful for
comparing their performance year on year and for measuring their performance
against national statistics for their sector – they can get this information from the
enforcing authority. Analysis of this type of information is useful in identifying trends
– for example, what types of accident are happening and how serious they are.

• Note: There’s space in the workbook for delegates to add their own notes (page
134).

• Explain to delegates that to calculate the

injury incidence rate they need to divide
the number of reportable injuries in a given
time period…

• …by the average number of employees

during that time period.

135
• Explain to delegates that once they’ve
divided the number of reportable injuries in
a given period by the average number of
employees during that time, they need to
multiply the result by 100,000.

• Click to show that in this scenario the

restaurant employs 50 people.

• Click to show that in the last year they’ve

had two injuries.

• Click to show that once they’ve divided two

by 50 they then need to multiply it by
100,000 to get their injury incidence rate.

136
• Click to show that in this scenario the
restaurant’s injury incidence rate is 4,000.

• Click to show that once a workplace has its

injury incidence rate, it can then compare it
with other branches in its organisation.

• For example, here are the injury incidence

rates for three other branches in the
organisation.

• Explain to delegates that if their company

had lots of other branches, they’d collect
the data from all of them and work out the
company’s injury incidence rate. Let’s
suppose after doing this your company’s
overall rate is 1,036.6.

• If their organisation doesn’t have any other

branches, they could compare it with
similar organisations and/or the national
average industry rate. So in this situation
the restaurant chain’s injury incidence rate
is far higher than the national average and
delegates need to look at what to do to
reduce it.

• Click to move on to the next slide.

137
This slide shows the fatal injury rates of some
industries. Click to move on to the next slide.

• Explain to delegates that these rates are an average from the last five years. They
can use these figures to compare their own organisation’s fatal injury incidence rate.

Comparing health and safety performance year on year with other units or locations
within a multi-site organisation, with national figures for the relevant sector or with
national performance (provided by the enforcing authority) is best done by normalising
the accident or incident data. Normalisation takes account of fluctuations in, for
example, the number of workers that were working during the year or the number of
hours worked, and ensures that comparisons are valid. There are two ways of
normalising the data.

The injury incidence rate is usually calculated as the number of injuries per 100,000
employees:

Number of reportable injuries in a given period

Average number of employees during the period x 100,000

Incidence rates can be calculated for any category of injury – for example, fatal, major,
over-three-day. Some organisations may calculate incidence rates per 1,000
employees, but the enforcement authorities produce national and sector incidence rates
based on 100,000 employees. This method of calculating incidence rates takes no
account of variations in working patterns, such as part-time working and overtime.

Calculating the injury incidence rate per 100,000 employees allows for easy comparison
with nationally produced figures. However, organisations can calculate their incidence
rate on a smaller number of employees, such as 1,000 or 10,000.

138
The injury frequency rate is usually calculated as the number of injuries per million
hours worked. Using the injury frequency rate overcomes the discrepancies in incidence
rates caused by part-time working and overtime.

Number of reportable injuries in a given period

total number of hours worked during the period x 1,000,000

Where there are few employees, it may be more appropriate to use a rolling or
cumulative frequency rate. The injury frequency rate is sensitive to small changes in the
number of accidents. For example, a small firm with 10 employees each working 40
hours a week and with one reportable injury in a year has an injury frequency rate of 50.
An increase of one in the number of reportable injuries results in an increase of 50 in
the frequency rate. If the organisation had 100 employees working the same number of
hours each, an increase in reportable injuries of one gives a change in frequency rate of
5.

139
This slide shows the non-fatal injury rates of
some industries. Click to move on to the next
slide.

• Explain to delegates that these rates are an average from the last five years. They
can use these figures to compare their own organisation’s non-fatal injury incidence
rate.

The accuracy of nationally compiled data on injuries and incidents at work depends on
employers complying with the reporting requirements of the Reporting of Injuries,
Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995. Under-reporting is a serious
problem in some sectors. Organisations with good reporting practices in sectors with
high levels of under-reporting may find that their performance is poor compared to the
published rate for their sector.

140
This slide asks delegates to think about and
discuss the limitations of only measuring
accident, incident and ill health reports. Click to
move on to the next slide.

• Explain to delegates that gathering information about accidents and ill health does
have limitations.

• Ask delegates to think about what limitations there could be in the kitchen
environment we’ve been looking at and in their own work environment.

• To help delegates with the question, think about offering the following
prompts/questions:

• if they introduced a health and safety initiative in their organisation, how could
they tell what impact it’d had? How soon could they get this information?

• suppose they’d noticed an increase in the number of minor injuries in their

organisation – is this enough information for them to tackle the issue?

• suppose they have a low level of injuries in their organisation – does that mean
they’re doing OK?

• Delegates can think about this either in groups, pairs or individually, depending on
the size of the group.

• The exercise is meant to be a quick discussion – delegates can write down in their
workbook (page 134) the answers that you and the group discuss.

The limitations of using reactive indicators (for example, injury and ill health statistics)
for measuring health and safety performance are:

1. there’s a time delay between the introduction of health and safety initiatives and their
outcomes – reactive indicators may give us the information too late for us to respond
2. they don’t tell us why we have particular accidents. Also, they don’t reflect the
potential severity of the undesired event, just its actual consequence

141
3. if the outcome we’re measuring is low – for example, when health and safety is good
and accidents are infrequent – they don’t provide enough feedback for managing
health and safety
4. they may not reveal underlying issues that could result in serious consequences.
Just because accident figures are OK doesn’t mean that all is well. Whether a
particular event results in injury is often down to chance rather than whether a
hazard is properly controlled
5. they may suffer from under-reporting of incidents, particularly if they’re linked to
reward systems.

142
This slide introduces proactive measurement.
Click to move on to the next slide.

• Explain to delegates that this type of measurement is about providing information on

how well they’re managing health and safety before undesired events, such as
accidents, incidents and ill health happen.

Proactive performance indicators provide information that helps us to respond to

changing circumstances and to take action to achieve desirable outcomes or avoid
unwanted ones. For example, if we’re interested in noise-induced hearing loss, we can
carry out audiometry at appropriate intervals. By doing this, we’ll detect changes in
hearing early. If we only used reactive measurement, we’d have to wait until workers
started reporting symptoms of hearing loss.

143
This slide shows the inputs that contribute to
health and safety management.

• Explain to delegates that to measure health and safety performance proactively,

they’ll need to look at the things (inputs) that contribute to effective health and safety
management. For example:

• their work environment and equipment

• safe systems of work and procedures
• people – employees and contractors.

They’ll also need to find ways of measuring these inputs.

• Click for the first bullet point to appear.

Continue until all three points have
appeared.

• As each bullet point appears, the image

changes to reflect the point.

• This image shows the slide when

everything has appeared.

144
 • Click to show that carrying out workplace
inspections can help us check that work
equipment is in good working order and
the work environment is OK. It also gives
us the chance to remedy any problems
before they cause an incident. So,
measuring the number of completed
workplace inspections against the number
planned provides a useful indicator of how
well we’re managing health and safety.

• Click to move on to the next slide.

Proactive performance indicators need to reflect three areas of positive input to health
and safety management. In addition, there needs to be a link between the input
performance indicators and the outputs of the health and safety management system.
For example, observations of employees’ compliance with certain procedures can be
linked to the absence of accidents and incidents in the associated activities.

Sometimes improvement in a proactive indicator can fail to produce an improvement in

the bottom-line reactive indicator because the wrong proactive indicator was chosen.

There is no single indicator of health and safety performance. We can develop a range
of indicators using:

1. data on the number of times the rules aren’t followed and the number and type of
recommendations made after inspections. For example, a workplace inspection may
identify poor housekeeping. From this, we can infer that there’s poor hazard
management, which in turn may lead to slips and trips
2. descriptions such as ‘poor’, ‘satisfactory’ and ‘good’. For example, in workplace
inspections, housekeeping can be rated on a scale, with descriptions allocated to
each point on the scale, so ‘poor’ equates to ‘floor and surface areas cluttered’.
3. percentage compliance figures for activities in the health and safety management
system, and ratings for the quality or effectiveness of these activities. For example,
in the case of training provision for manual handling, the performance indicators
could be the percentage of employees needing the training who’ve actually had it,
and the percentage of manual handling tasks that are carried out using the correct
techniques.

145
Examples of proactive indicators:

• the number of workers trained in health and safety

• the effectiveness of health and safety training
• the number of risk assessments completed/reviewed as a proportion of those
required
• how well the health and safety policy is communicated
• how long it takes to implement the recommendations of a health and safety audit
• the number of suggestions from workers for improvements in health and safety
• how well PPE is used
• the frequency and effectiveness of health and safety briefings.

146
This slide shows what good indicators should
be.

• Explain to delegates that giving people training helps them to do their jobs safely, so
measuring how much training their staff are getting is another indicator of how well
they’re managing health and safety.

• Good indicators are:

• objective and easy to measure and collect

• relevant to the organisation or group whose performance you’re measuring
• able to provide prompt and reliable indications of the level of performance
• cost-effective in terms of effort needed to gather the information
• understood and owned by the organisation or group whose performance you’re
measuring.

• Click for the first bullet point to appear.

Continue until all four bullet points appear.

147
 • This image shows the slide when
everything has appeared.

• Click to move on to the next slide.

Just because an indicator is easy and cost-effective to collect, it isn’t necessarily the
right one to use. It must also be relevant to the group whose performance you’re
measuring. In particular, indicators must be connected to activities that are important to
the group/organisation, must be open to influence by the group/organisation, must
relate to something which offers scope for improvement and must also provide a clear
indication of how the performance could be improved.

148
This slide asks delegates to think about some
indicators that could be used to measure
health and safety proactively. Click to move on
to the next slide.

• Ask delegates to identify the inputs to health and safety in this work environment and
from that to develop indicators that could be used for proactive measurement.

• Delegates can do this in groups, pairs or individually, depending on the size of the
group.

• The exercise is meant to be a quick discussion – the delegates can write down in
their workbook (page 136) the answers that you and the group discuss.

Inputs to effective health and safety are:

• quality of the work environment and equipment

• effectiveness of procedures
• behaviour and ability of the people.

Ways of carrying out proactive measurement:

• inspections of the condition of work equipment (such as cookers, microwaves, pots

and pans)
• inspections of the general conditions of the workplace
• measuring the percentage of maintenance completed on schedule
• observing workers’ behaviour
• recording the number and effectiveness of health and safety briefings or talks
• recording how many workers are trained in (for example) manual handling
• measuring the effectiveness of (for example) manual handling training.

149
This slide explains that there’s no ‘one size fits
all’ when measuring performance. Click to
move on to the next slide.

• Explain to delegates that there’s no ‘one size fits all’ – different organisations will
need different indicators.

Which proactive performance indicators you choose will depend on the maturity of the
health and safety arrangements – or culture – within the organisation. Organisations will
need to identify the areas of activity that present the main threats to performance or
opportunities for improvement. Clearly, these won’t be the same across all
organisations.

An organisation that’s just developed or is still developing its approach to health and
safety management will focus on compliance. It’ll need performance indicators to
establish the management system and whether people are complying with it.

As the health and safety management system becomes more mature, the organisation
will become more interested in establishing the effectiveness of the system and
identifying opportunities for improvement – it’ll therefore need indicators that do this.

Organisations with a mature health and safety culture are characterised by a greater
level of engagement by all parts of the organisation in driving improvements in health
and safety forward. Performance indicators will focus on those specific areas with the
greatest opportunity for improvement. Getting the workforce on board is the key to
identifying these areas.

150
This slide explains that there’s a range of
people who’ll be interested in information about
an organisation’s performance measurement.

• Explain to delegates that some will be internal to the organisation, for example:

• senior management
• line managers
• employees
• safety/employee representatives
• shareholders.

• Click for the first bullet point to appear.

Continue until all four have appeared.

• This image shows the slide when

everything has appeared.

• Click to move on to the next slide.

151
Chief executives and senior management will use performance data to establish
whether corporate and business objectives are being achieved. They need information
at a strategic level – for example, targets achieved, reduction in insurance premiums,
benchmarks against others in the sector, compliance with audit findings and
comparisons in audit data between departments.

Line managers will use performance data to establish whether their department is
meeting its objectives. They need local information – for example, on the status of the
risk assessment programme, the quality of accident or incident investigation
programmes and the status of training programmes.

Employees will use performance data to establish how well they’re meeting individual
operational performance objectives. They need team-level information – for example,
how well they’re sticking to safe systems of work and planned training programmes, and
numbers and types of specific accidents and incidents. In addition, safety/employee
representatives will need performance data that refer to the groups they represent.

Shareholders will use performance data to establish how well the organisation is
performing and is likely to perform in the future. They need comparative sector data –
for example, benchmarks against other companies in the sector, the total number and
types of successful claims, and levels of financial loss or gain in relation to investment in
health and safety.

152
This slide explains that external people may
also be interested in information about an
organisation’s performance measurement.

• Explain to delegates that external interest includes:

• enforcement bodies
• insurers
• clients
• the public.

These people or bodies will need performance information in different formats and for
different purposes.

• Click for the first bullet point to appear.

Continue until all three have appeared.

• This image shows the slide when

everything has appeared.

• Click to move on to the next slide.

153
Enforcement bodies will use performance data to establish whether an organisation is
meeting its legal requirements.

Insurers will use performance data to establish how well the organisation manages risk
– they’ll incorporate the overall level of risk exposure into insurance premiums.

Clients (and potential clients) will use performance data when considering whether an
organisation fits their requirements.

The public will use performance data to note how well an organisation is meeting its
social objectives.

• Explain to delegates before you click to the next slide that they’ve now completed
the second key learning point: how do you measure health and safety performance?

• If you think it’s necessary and you have time, you could at this point review what the
delegates have just learned.

154
This slide shows the third key learning point.
Click to move on to the next slide.

• Use this slide to highlight that you’re now moving on to the next key learning point.

155
This slide introduces auditing. Click to move on
to the next slide.

• Explain to delegates that auditing aims to find objective evidence (or evidence that’s
as objective as possible) for whether the current way of managing health and safety
meets the organisation’s health and safety policy and aims.

• Note: There’s space in the workbook for delegates to add their own notes (page
137).

Audit is a necessary aspect of a health and safety management system. Like all
systems, it’ll deteriorate over time and without audit, this deterioration could go
undetected.

156
This slide describes an internal audit. Click to
move on to the next slide.

• Explain to delegates that an internal audit is done by staff within the organisation
and helps managers by measuring the effectiveness of health and safety
management.

Advantages of internal audit:

• internal auditors know the organisation and where to look for relevant evidence
• internal auditors’ reports have high internal credibility
• findings are more likely to be considered realistic when viewed by peers
• it provides opportunities for learning about other parts of the organisation
• it helps the transfer of good practices across the organisation.

Disadvantages of internal audit:

• external stakeholders may be sceptical about the independence of the internal

auditors
• internal audit takes resources away from normal work
• internal auditors can have a limited vision of improvement.

157
This slide describes an external audit. Click to
move on to the next slide.

• Explain to delegates that an external audit is done by a third party and provides an
independent view. It often represents the interests of other stakeholders as well as
management.

Advantages of external audit:

• external auditors have high credibility with external stakeholders

• external auditors can provide strong benchmarking knowledge and have access to
external verification bodies and recognised certification where this adds value.

Disadvantages of external audit:

• external auditors’ findings can often be viewed negatively by staff

• external auditors often ask for lots of documentation before they start, as they’re not
familiar with the organisation, and they can take longer than internal auditors to
complete their work
• external audits can be expensive.

158
This slide shows the three types of evidence
that audits typically use.

• Explain to delegates that audits typically use three types of evidence:

• documentation – to check whether it adequately covers the hazards in the

organisation

• interviews – to check that awareness, know-how and resources are appropriate

• observation – to check what’s described in the documentation is really present in

the workplace.

• Click for the next bullet point to appear.

Continue until all three bullet points
appear.

• As each bullet point appears, the image

changes to reflect the point.

• This image shows the slide when

everything has appeared.

• Click to move on to the next slide.

159
Internal and external auditing can address problems with compliance and operational
performance:

• compliance auditing establishes how well an organisation is meeting the standards

required by legislation
• operational auditing establishes the effectiveness and efficiency of the organisational
arrangements for managing health and safety.

The audit process has three key stages:

• planning – including discussing and agreeing the objectives and scope of the audit,
collecting and reviewing documentation and preparing the audit plan
• implementing – interviewing a range of relevant people, reviewing additional
documents, observing the work environment and activities
• evaluating and reporting – assembling and evaluating the evidence and writing the
report.

Planning

By identifying the audit objectives and evaluation criteria, we can make sure that we
audit the right things and find out whether they comply with what’s needed or not. Audit
objectives should reflect the risks associated with the activities we’re auditing and
should be supported by guidance describing the intended outcomes of the audit. Audits
can range from a strategic organisational view of health and safety management to
specific audits on topics like the condition of plant or machinery at a site. The audit
planning process must be well documented and include the following information:

• health and safety plans

• operational procedures
• organisational structure chart defining responsibilities
• previous audit results
• previous inspections
• risk assessments and risk controls
• accident and near miss reports.

Implementing

Documents used in the audit:

• management correspondence
• safe working procedures
• maintenance schedules/permits to work
• accident and near miss statistics
• site inspection records.

160
Conducting the audit

• create a site visit timetable

• establish contacts and schedule times for inspections and interviews
• use a checklist to help create a structured audit
• remain open-minded
• when interviewing someone, avoid phrasing questions in a way that encourages bias
• use open and closed questions to provide more detail – closed questions can be
used to confirm facts
• use observation to identify compliance/non-compliance and to confirm an
interviewee’s answers to your questions.

Evaluating and reporting

Audit evidence must be prepared and evaluated against audit objectives and evaluation
criteria. Audit data can be compared with:

• previous audit findings

• other business unit or multi-site audit findings (internal comparisons)
• sector performance.

The audit report should include the following information:

• title – including the key features of the audit and the name of the person/organisation
that completed it
• addressee – the name of the company or person who commissioned the audit
• introduction – an overview of the organisation and the type of audit
• scope – the boundaries of the report – when and where it was done, what it covers
• findings of the report – a description based on an unqualified opinion, a qualified
opinion or an adverse opinion. Essentially, an unqualified opinion means that the
auditors were happy with what they found; a qualified opinion means that they found
some minor discrepancies; and an adverse opinion means that they found
unacceptably serious errors
• conclusions
• auditor’s disclaimer notice – this details any restrictions imposed on the audit, such
as time and accessibility limits, availability of data or the size of sample used.

161
This slide explains that managers may end up
producing an action plan to deal with audit
findings. Click to move on to the next slide.

• Explain to delegates that audit findings are of little use unless we act on them. As
managers, they may be involved, along with senior management, in producing an
action plan to deal with audit findings.

Acting on audit data

There’s little point to an audit if no-one does anything as a result. Assuming that the
audit’s conclusions are valid, responsible managers must be tasked to produce an
action plan to implement its findings, to correct any problems identified and capitalise on
any strengths. To complete the cycle it must also be the designated responsibility of a
more senior manager to make sure that the action plan is carried out.

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This slide provides some tips for measuring
performance.

• These tips are in the workbook (page 138). Note: there’s space in the workbook for
delegates to add their own notes (page 138).

• Click for the first bullet point to appear.

Continue until all three bullet points
appear.

• As each bullet point appears the image

changes to reflect the point.

• This image shows the slide when

everything has appeared.

• Click to move on to the next slide.

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• Performance measurement is key in knowing how individuals, groups and
organisations are performing.

• Reactive performance measures focus on the outputs of health and safety, which
are often negative. They’re easily gathered but have limitations.

• Proactive performance measures focus on the inputs to health and safety. They’re
powerful, as they can provide warnings of problems before they happen, but they
must relate to the outputs and the organisation’s objectives.

• An audit checks whether your overall approach to health and safety is delivering the
results you want.

• Explain to delegates before you click on to the next slide that they’ve completed
Module 7. All that’s left is for them to answer the key learning points.

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This last slide shows the key learning points.
Click to return to the menu screen.

• Explain to delegates that they should now be able to answer the questions on the
slide.

• Give them a couple of minutes to write down their answers in the workbook (page
139). Remember: if delegates have learned nothing else, they should be able to
answer these three questions.

• Work through the answers with the delegates.

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