The contribution of balanced scorecards to the management of occupational health and safety

While it has been established for many years that the management of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) is carried out by means of Management Systems, the question of how to measure the performance and the control of these systems is still current. This article addresses this problem, and discusses the contribution of the use of advanced indicators integrated into a Balanced Scorecard. Traditionally, the performance indicators used to measure the performance of Management Systems are: the frequency and severity of absences due to sickness, and work-related diseases. These traditional, retrospective indicators have several constraints and limitations which include the fact that they are based on historical results and cannot be used proactively to handle anomalous situations. The use of the concept of the Balanced Scorecard (Kaplan & Norton, 1996) applied to the field of OHS management responds in part to deficiencies identified in the sole use of traditional OHS indicators. A case study of the OHS Balanced Scorecard applied to two key health and safety management processes (regulatory compliance and risk management) is described as part of an experiment with a company in the aerospace sector.