Section 12 - Safety Performance Goals

Your safety policy includes an overall statement of your safety objectives. Examples of these objectives, which are broad in nature, are listed below. Now you need to describe specific safety performance goals. First of all, try to select goals that are attainable. One of the items on the periodic company safety assessment and management review (discussed in the section “How do we know we are being effective?”) is that you will measure how well you achieved your goals. Here are some safety management system goals to help you start a brainstorming session in your company. Pick out the ones that best apply to your company. Select specific percentages and times where needed and add other goals that address your specific needs.

Safety Objectives

• To identify and eliminate hazardous conditions
• To provide safety-related educational material to all personnel
• To provide a safe, healthy work environment for all personnel
• To prevent and reduce aircraft accidents and incidents and to prevent resulting losses
• To incorporate awareness, compliance, inspection, investigation and education by providing programs delivered to employees
• To prevent damage and injury to non-company property and personnel resulting from our operations

Safety Goals

• To increase the number of hazard reports received by X% over the previous year ⁴
• To investigate all hazardous events within X number of days of the occurrence
• To reduce days lost to injury by X% over the previous year
• To assist in developing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), where applicable
• To review, with safety in mind, all proposed new equipment acquisitions, facilities, operations and procedures
• To improve the effectiveness of the safety management system through a yearly safety assessment that reviews all aspects of the SMS
• To reduce annual insurance costs by X % over the previous year

Management Review

Part of the development of a Safety Management Plan is ensuring that you can measure how well the plan is working. For that reason, your goals must be measurable and have a time component. In the same manner that a manager’s performance is measured against financial performance goals, success should also be measured against safety goals. In the section “How do we know we are being effective?” we will be talking about the “Management Review” which will rely on the safety goals that you set.

⁴  In a developing SMS with a new reporting system, you would expect to see an increase in the number of reports over the short term. This shows that the company culture encourages this feedback. In the long term, as the SMS matures, you would expect to see a decrease in number of hazard reports in a proactive company.