Measuring safety performance is a crucial part of an organization and provides information for continual improvement. It can be explained with reference to
ISO 45001:2018 – OH&S Management System
- Clause 6.3 OH&S Objectives and planning to achieve them.
- Clause 9.1 Monitoring, measurement, analysis and evaluation.
It is essential for an organization to identify, establish and implement the right safety measure. There are two types of indicators (lagging and leading indicators) to measure safety performance.
Lagging Indicator
Lagging indicators are reactive in nature that measures an organization’s performance like the number and types of incidents occurred based on the information from past incidents and accidents such as reactionary analysis. The reactionary analysis is analyzing past data to find loopholes in processes and policies.
Lagging indicators focus on failures and hence are known as failure-focused measures.It gives us a clear idea of past mishaps - such as lost time, accident rate and workers' compensation costs.
Some examples of lagging indicators:
- Frequency and severity of injuries
- Fatalities
- Lost Time Incidents
- Reportable incidents
- Medical claims and worker’s compensation costs
Most of the organizations use lagging indicators so as to measure the safety performance and check the compliance of legal requirements. Lagging indicators reveal the number of injuries and severity of the incidents which indicates the overall reactive performance of the safety system.
Lagging Indicators – Insufficient to provide insight into the preventive measures
Lagging indicators provide the information after the event/incident has occurred which does not adequately measure the performance of the safety management system. Organizations are required to take appropriate measures to either eliminate or reduce OH&S hazards and risks. Hence, reactionary data of lagging indicator is insufficient and does not provide insight into the preventive measures of the management system.
If an organisation has a low incident rate or lost time injury, it does not mean it has an effective OH&S system. There are numerous risk factors within in the organization which if not observed/measured will contribute to future incidents.
Leading indicator
Leading indicators are proactive in nature that helps in predicting and preventing injury and illness in the workplace. These indicators focus on future safety performance and continuous improvement to help reduce risks. Leading indicators measure proactive steps taken by the employees and track what people are doing in the workplace to help prevent incidents. These measures include:
Some examples of leading indicators:
- Safety training
- Near miss reporting
- Initiatives to improve safety culture
- Positive feedback and recognition for OH&S performance
- Risk assessment, identification and mitigation
- Employee surveys
- Safety audits and inspections
- Communication, participation and consultation of workers
- Behavioural observations
- Ergonomic issues identified and corrected
- Reduction of musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) risk factors
- Safety Committees
The Benefits of Using Leading Indicators
Leading indicators play a vital role in preventing worker fatalities, injuries, and illnesses, as well as strengthening the safety culture in the workplace. Leading indicators are used as a tool for improving overall organizational performance.
Employers may find that leading indicators can:
- Prevent workplace injuries and illnesses
- Minimize the costs associated with incidents
- Improve productivity and overall organizational performance
- Enhance safety and health performance
- Increases worker participation
Monitoring safety leading indicators allows us to:
- Evaluate the performance of HSE program
- Strengthen our safety culture
- Contribute to the continuous improvement of the safety management system
- Communicate results of HSE efforts to others at work
Leading indicator measures performance while a lagging indicator measures failure. For the successful improvement of safety performance by leading and lagging safety indicators, they should:
- allow accurate and detailed comparisons;
- lead to correct or help avoid false conclusions;
- be clearly understood by everyone, especially those responsible for implementing change;
- measure what they are supposed to, frequently, accurately and reliably;
- collect information that is relevant for the management decisions and actions;
- adequately map and identify causal links (root causes, precursors, events and outcomes); and
- bring about an appropriate response, leading to a consistent focus on implementing change
Conclusion
To improve the safety performance of a business organization, we should use a combination of leading and lagging indicators.
While using leading indicators, it’s important to measure the performance based on impact. For example, don’t just mark the number and attendance of safety meetings and training sessions conducted, instead measure the impact of the safety meeting by determining the number of people who met the key learning objectives of the meeting/training session for the desired results.
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