Measuring safety beyond counting injuries
It’s easy to evaluate how safe a company is by comparing the number of accidents or injuries to previous years. While there is some value in looking at injury rates, employers should also look at leading indicators.
Leading indicators are ways to measure safety performance before an accident or injury happens. They include things like how many safety inspections have been conducted, how many training sessions have been held, or how many employees attended safety meetings.
The opposite measure, known as lagging indicators, come into play after an injury already occurred. Lagging indicators help identify problems, but don’t help as much with prevention. Many employers are shifting focus to leading indicators to prevent injuries and get a sense of how the safety process is working.
For example, a department may see zero injuries over a period of time, but does that mean there were no unsafe behaviors? Does that mean the department was committed to safety? It might — but it could also just be luck. Lagging indicators don’t show the complete picture. Some common leading indicators include:
- Percent of departments conducting self-inspections
- Number of safety committee meetings and percent attendance
- Number of behavior-based observations and percent employee participation
- Number of safety suggestions and percent employee participation
- Audit findings and corrective action time
- Average time to act on safety suggestions
- Percent training past due
Although a company might not have any recent injuries, if the above indicators don’t look good, the company’s luck could change for the worse at any time.