Benchmarking is an important occupational tool and a great opportunity to analyse your company’s professional performance. It allows you to identify where improvements need to be made in your own business, as well as looking at how competitors are functioning.
For those in the health and safety sector, benchmarking has become a vital aspect of corporate management. By comparing processes and performance with other companies in a similar field, managers can improve compliance with health and safety laws, as well as reducing accidents and ill health in the workplace.
Today, benchmarking schemes are implemented by safety managers across the hospitality sector, particularly in restaurants and hotel groups, to collect performance data and also to share good health and safety practice between personnel in different departments, sites or branches.
The primary aim is to understand how well your business is doing, in terms of hygiene and safety performance, in relation to your peers and your competitors. By monitoring and comparing business performance, you can make informed decisions on additional training needs or support to improve hygiene and safety procedures; as well as focusing on achieving corporate targets and goals and meeting clients’ high expectations.
So, what are the benefits of benchmarking? Primarily, a benchmarking scheme allows managers to closely analyse health and safety performance criteria. Benchmarking highlights risk assessment requirements; focuses on hygiene inspections and staff training needs; allows managers and employees to share good practice; and ultimately reduces incidents and accidents in the workplace.
Benchmarking also allows you to examine where costs can be reduced and how efficiency can be improved. Other questions which will arise from this process may also be… How productive is your business? What are the opportunities for improvement? In addition, new ways of working and innovative ideas will also be highlighted. You will ultimately be able to forecast the impact of change and prepare for future growth.
Reporting on health and safety performance is imperative. Sharing data not only enables employees to understand progress in achieving hygiene and safety objectives, it also allows managers to publicise findings to key internal personnel and external audiences.
Effective health and safety management and superior performance is crucial to the success of any company in the hospitality sector. Benchmarking is therefore an ideal way to ensure that you are meeting and exceeding industry expectations, as well as setting new standards of excellence to continually enhance the performance of your business.