Dangers of Benchmarking - Successfully Learning From Other Organizations

Learning from other organizations both within the same sector or organizations in different sectors can be helpful. But there is a danger. One of the most fundamental system concepts is that system performance is not the sum of the system parts but rather the product of their interactions. This means that it is essential to assess how the candidate process or method will fit your organization's system when learning from another organization or benchmarking. A given organization may have been successful using a particular metric. But the success is only minimally the result of the metric; the success is more related to how the metric is used - to monitor a process rather than measure personnel that results in positive or negative incentives and the organization's culture.

Documents and Research Papers

A Systems Approach to Risk Management Through Leading Safety Indicators, Nancy Leveson

Leading & Lagging Indicators, Fred Manuele

Andrew Hopkins argues that leading and lagging indicators are actually on a continuum and are contextual.  See this link:

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/536316c1e4b03715f2388918/t/5602010ae4b0ceaec9081a62/1442971914428/WP+53+Thinking+About+Process+Safety+Indicators.pdf

Guidance on Developing Safety Performance Indicators Related to Chemical Accident Prevention, Preparedness and Response (2008)

https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/guidance-on-developing-safety-performance-indicators-for-industry_9789264221741-en#page1

Campbell Institute document

https://www.nsc.org/Portals/0/Documents/CambpellInstituteandAwardDocuments/WP-PracticalGuidetoLI.pdf

UK royal society document

https://www.rospa.com/occupational-safety/Advice/Leadership/Measuring-Performance

API (American Petroleum Institute) process safety document

https://www.api.org/oil-and-natural-gas/health-and-safety/refinery-and-plant-safety/process-safety/process-safety-standards/rp-754

CCPS process safety document

https://www.aiche.org/sites/default/files/docs/pages/CCPS_ProcessSafety_Lagging_2011_2-24.pdf

International chemical engineer process safety document --- generally better than API and CCPS

https://www.icheme.org/media/1092/safety-centre-metrics.pdf

Offshore energy sector and maritime indicators including culture

https://maritimesafetyinnovationlab.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/abs-safety-culture-and-leading-indicators-of-safety.pdf

NASA has done work on safety culture assessment, etc. 

https://sma.nasa.gov/sma-disciplines/safety-culture 

PowerPoint Presentations

Is the way your organization measures safety misleading? Are new measures needed?

Documents and Papers