Tips for Determining Yearly Safety Goals

It’s that time of the year again! Time to sit down, break out your thinking caps, and set goals that you’ll strive toward for the whole year.

However, if you want your safety resolutions to be more successful than your laundry list of abandoned New Year’s resolutions, you can’t approach your safety goals like a wishlist.

Let’s say you want to reach goal zero: zero injuries, zero incidents. It’s a noble goal, but you’ll never conquer it unless you have a strategy and a goal written for success. Here’s how to be more effective in determining yearly safety goals.

Make Your Goals SMART

The best place to start is by setting SMART goals. Most of us are familiar with the concept, yet all too often, we neglect the details of SMART goals when writing our yearlong objectives.

SMART goals are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

For example, saying you want to have fewer workplace safety incidents isn’t a SMART goal. But you can make it SMART if you narrow down the goal to a specific incident category, state by how much you want the incident number reduced, select a reasonable number for your workplace, and set clear deadlines to check your benchmarks.

Make Them Realistic and Appropriate

However, pay careful attention to ensure your goals are achievable (realistic) and relevant (appropriate).

It may not be realistic to completely eliminate all workplace incidents by the end of the year. You can, however, reduce the incident rate by 10%, for example.

In addition, make sure that your goals are relevant to your company and work environment. If your workers don’t use chemicals, for example, it doesn’t make sense to set a goal relating to chemical hazards. Or, to put a finer point on it, if your company is focusing on a specific type of growth, it does little good to set a goal that has nothing to do with that type of growth.

Encourage All-Around Involvement

Regardless of what goals you set, you need to get the whole workforce involved to successfully implement them. That means everyone.

Skipping low-level employees will leave those employees disconnected from the goals. However, lack of involvement from management signals to the larger workforce that management isn’t that interested in seeing the goals come to fruition.

The best way to ensure involvement across the board is to get everyone involved in the conversation and to get them in on the game early. Everyone should have a voice and everyone’s voice should be heard.

Plus, this helps bolster a safety culture going into the new year, especially if you follow-through on your goals and continue to show that your safety goals are a priority.

Are You Determining Yearly Safety Goals?

If you’re determining yearly safety goals, good safety data is the best place to start. That’s where we come in.

We built safety software to evolve with you, allowing you to gather the information you need to make critical decisions, track your progress, and streamline your overall EHS program. Want to learn how our software can bolster your goals, big or small? Get in touch today to find out more.