July 15 2024
By: Traci D. Long
Having been in the safety realm for over 20 years, I hear a lot of references to finding the root cause of an accident or injury. While the need for this is very clear on the legal and procedural side of an accident, knowing the cause doesn’t necessarily help to avoid the injury.
Most people who have heard of Pareto tend to think of the 80/20 rule, but Vilfredo Pareto developed many insights into analysis of mathematics and probability. Applying these analyses to safety data has proven highly efficient for providing focus to maximize the impact of efforts.
A Pareto analysis utilizes multiple categories and behaviors as prevention points to eliminate or reduce the probability of an incident and/or the severity of injury. For example, consider a worker trips while walking up a flight of stairs due to slipping on a piece of paper they didn’t see. But why was the paper there? In addition to the housekeeping conditions, a Pareto analysis would also conclude that 3-point contact and keeping eyes on path could have helped to avoid the incident altogether.
When analyzing prevention points, you find commonalities across different types of incidents. This makes it easy to focus on the top few that can impact a large percentage of potential risk. Keeping the focus small helps people internalize these risk prevention opportunities, in and out of the worksite. Good data is key to finding prevention opportunities. Your employees have accident prevention in mind. Are you helping them focus it accurately?
Traci D Long is the Director of Operations for ProAct Safety. With more than 20 years of experience, she assists with statistical analyses of safety management data, provides project oversight and management for client and internal projects, and assists with the development of quality assurance efforts.
For more information, call +1.936.273.8700 or email info@ProActSafety.com.
