​The following guidance applies equally to consideration of safety, health and environmental (SHE) performance and improvement. The balance between safety, health and environment issues in SHE plans will depend on the hazards faced by the organisation.

Targets

Relevant measures should be established to monitor the effectiveness of the safety, health and environment management, to drive improvement in performance or to monitor maintenance of current performance. Wherever possible these measures should be quantitative so that progress can be reviewed unambiguously and targets established for their performance.

These measures should include both leading and lagging indicators of performance. The following lists are not intended to be exhaustive but provide a basis for consideration.

Examples of lagging, or output, measures of SHE performance include:

• Nos. of injuries reported to the HSE ( RIDDORS )
• Nos. of injuries - categorised by their severity, lost time, hospital treatment, first aid treatment etc
• Days lost due to injury
• Nos. of reported instances of occupation ill health
• Nos. of attendances at Occupational Health
• Days lost due to occupational ill health
• Nos. of fires
• Nos. of environmental incidents
• Nos. of prosecutions for breach of environmental consents
• Nos. of breaches in environmental consents
• Volume of hazardous waste
• Volume of non hazardous waste
• Utility usage e.g. water, electricity, gas/oil etc
• Settlement costs for health and safety claims
• Radiation exposure levels
• Radiation exposure above established controls

Examples of leading, or input, measures of SHE performance include:

• Nos. of HSE reportable dangerous occurrences ( RIDDORS )
• Nos. of SHE near misses - assessed by their severity
• Nos. of safety tours completed to plan
• Nos. of hazardous conditions identified during safety tours
• Completion rate for actions arising from safety tours
• Emergency exercise completed to plan
• Actions arising from emergency exercises
• Completion rate for actions arising from emergency exercises
• Nos. of SHE code audits completed to plan
• Nos. of deficiencies raised during audits
• Completion rate of actions arising from audits
• Days spent SHE training
• Completion rate for refresher SHE training
• Nos. of failures in registered equipment items e.g. lifting equipment, pressure vessels, local exhaust ventilation systems
• Proportion of risk assessments reviewed within the last 2 years
• Nos. of risk assessments completed.

Plans

Based upon the measures employed to monitor SHE performance and performance targets plans should be developed. Plans should be SMART describing how, when and by whom the activity will be achieved.

Format of Departmental SHE improvement plans

1. Executive Summary

• overview of the previous financial year's SHE performance, key learning, and the objectives and targets established for the forthcoming financial year

2. Review of previous year SHE performance

• relevant lagging and leading measures
• comparison with recent years
• conclusions

3. SHE improvement targets and plans for forthcoming year

• based upon the review of previous year SHE performance, establish the objectives and/or targets for the coming financial year
• identify the SMART actions that need to be planned to deliver the objectives and/or targets

4. Appendices

• all basic data upon which the review, conclusions and improvement plans are based included for reference