Leading and Lagging Indicators in Safety

 

Leading and Lagging Indicators in Safety




While lagging indicators can alert you to a failure in an area of your safety and health program or to the existence of a hazard, leading indicators allow you to take preventive action to address that failure or hazard before it turns into an incident.

 

Leading indicators can play a vital role in preventing worker fatalities, injuries, and illnesses and strengthening other safety and health outcomes in the workplace.

 

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Leading indicators are proactive and preventive measures that can shed light about the effectiveness of safety and health activities and reveal potential problems in a safety and health program.

 

Many employers are familiar with lagging indicators. Lagging indicators measure the occurrence and frequency of events that occurred in the past, such as the number or rate of injuries, illnesses, and fatalities.

 

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While lagging indicators can alert you to a failure in an area of your safety and health program or to the existence of a hazard, leading indicators are important because they can tell you whether your safety and health activities are effective at preventing incidents.

 

A good safety and health program uses leading indicators to drive change and lagging indicators to measure effectiveness.

 

Leading indicators are a valuable tool regardless of whether you have a safety or health program, what you have included in your program, or what stage you may be at in your program.

 

Leading indicators can improve organizational performance in a variety of ways. Employers may find that leading indicators can:

  • Prevent workplace injuries and illnesses.
  • Reduce costs associated with incidents.
  • Improve productivity and overall organizational performance.
  • Optimize safety and health performance.
  • Raise worker participation.

 

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The drawbacks of lagging indicators

The major drawback to only using lagging indicators of safety performance is that they tell you how many people got hurt and how badly, but not how well your company is doing at preventing incidents and accidents.

 

The reactionary nature of lagging indicators makes them a poor gauge of prevention. For example, when managers see a low injury rate, they may become complacent and put safety on the bottom of their to-do list, when in fact, there are numerous risk factors present in the workplace that will contribute to future injuries.

 

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Best practices for using leading indicators

Companies dedicated to safety excellence are shifting their focus to using leading indicators to drive continuous improvement. Lagging indicators measure failure; leading indicators measure performance.

 

According to workplace safety thought leader Aubrey Daniels, leading indicators should:

1.   Allow you to see small improvements in performance

2.   Measure the positive: what people are doing versus failing to do

3.   Enable frequent feedback to all stakeholders

4.   Be credible to performers

5.   Be predictive

6.   Increase constructive problem solving around safety

7.   Make it clear what needs to be done to get better

8.   Track Impact versus Intention

 

While there is no perfect or “one size fits all” measure for safety, following these criteria will help you track impactful leading indicators.


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