Assess the needs of your organization when developing your family safety and health program. An assessment should include an examination of records - self-surveys, incident reports and insurance reports - to identify which health issues and off-the-job safety injuries are impacting your workforce. Once problems are identified, programming efforts can be directed to where they will do the most good.

Create Baseline and Establish Program Metrics

Key to a safety and health program is collecting the necessary employee information to establish program goals and metrics. This information will prove program value, effectiveness and return on investment. Organizations should develop a workable system of collecting that is in accordance with established policies and practices.

Organizations can collect safety and health data. This data can help establish a baseline. With a baseline, your program can create improvement goals and metrics.   Internal data includes:

• Company medical records and personal records
• Insurance department or benefits administrator records
• Accident and health insurance carrier records
• Timekeeping or payroll department records
• Supervisor records
• Employee needs surveys

If your organization data is not available or cannot be readily accessed, you can look at external national, state or local community data to identify trends and set goals and metrics. External data includes:

• Benchmark data
• State injury data
• State health data
• County health data
• County Data - Obesity and Physical Inactivity
• Local health departments
• National health data
• National injury data

Other data and tools:

• Incident Reporting - modify current incident reports to include reporting of off-the-job incidents.
• Medical Claims Reporting - work with your benefits providers to access medical claims. These reports can determine what injuries and illnesses are affecting your employees and their families.
• Health People 2020 - use Healthy People 2020 national objectives to set goals for your employee and family health and safety initiatives. Benchmarking to National Health Goals may be able to help you develop program goals. 

Learn more about how NSC can help you conduct employee perception surveys.