Try to remember automobile safety advertising from the 1960s. You can’t remember any because it didn’t exist. When public reporting of standardized car crash test performance data began, the manufacturers who resisted public reporting of this information discovered that an audience was waiting for it — and that safety sells. Now crash test results are trumpeted in all media. The value of and the investment in car safety engineering programs has skyrocketed because the information is transparent and the public has learned to value it.
Why should employee safety and health be any different? It’s time that key safety and health metrics come out of the closet and have the full spotlight of public disclosure turned on them. Besides the public — who might be quite interested in the ongoing safety performance of the local business where fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters earn a paycheck — employees, managers, regulators and EHS professionals all could benefit from the transparency of safety and health information.