EBOOK | 15 MINUTE READ
How To Improve Your Serious Injury and Fatality (SIF) Prevention Strategy
Herbert William Heinrich hypothesized that if the number of minor incidents went down, the number of serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs) would fall at the same rate. So, for the last near-century, health and safety professionals have depended on reducing incidents to prevent SIFs.
But while Heinrich’s philosophy was sound, his theory isn’t accurate.
In this eBook, we’ll:
- Explore the reasons for the downfall of the traditional approach to SIF prevention
- Introduce emerging strategies to control serious injuries
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and learn how to better manage serious injuries and fatalities across your organization.
Shifting The Focus to SIF Potential
An incident can be said to have a SIF potential when it could have reasonably resulted in a serious injury or fatality had any of the circumstances or safety measures changed.
It’s a matter of chance, but if you rolled the dice over and over, you’d roll two ones eventually. When determining whether a task or situation has SIF potential, ask yourself this question: If the situation was repeated dozens or hundreds of times, is it reasonable to conclude the outcome could eventually become a SIF? If the answer is yes, the situation has SIF potential. Health and safety departments should use incidents with SIF potential as a crucial learning opportunity to see where real workplace risk exists and proactively take steps to control these risks before a serious incident or fatality actually occurs.
Putting In Place Investigative Standards
As our focus shifts toward SIF potential, an increasing number of organizations across multiple industries are adopting SIF prevention strategies. As you’ve likely guessed, these strategies are systems of procedures, standards and dedicated responsibilities an organization creates and follows with the ultimate goal of preventing SIFs
Specific, detailed strategies can help organizations to take action in many ways, from boosting awareness and establishing a framework for thinking about SIFs to helping organizations tie SIF-based leading indicators to safety goals.
The following four steps are a good starting point for building a robust SIF prevention strategy:
- Determine SIF precursors
- Establish SIF exposure mitigation
- Determine how your organization will gather and analyze data
- Delegate responsibilities to management, supervisors and workers
Educating Your Workforce
SIFs can be a difficult topic to discuss at work. As a result, workers may have limited knowledge. Improving communication between management and workers regarding SIF prevention can have a profound effect on workplace health and safety.
Want to learn more?
For more information on how to advance your organization’s SIF prevention strategy, download our free eBook.
