9/8/2017 A Short Guide to Leading and Lagging Indicators of Safety Performance

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A Short Guide to Leading and

Lagging Indicators of Safety
Performance
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SERVICES CUSTOMERS

Does your facility have an e ective safety culture? Is safety truly a priority?

One way to improve the e ectiveness of your safety process is to change the way
it is measured.

Measurement is an important part of any management process and forms the basis
for continuous improvement. Measuring safety performance is no di erent and
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9/8/2017 A Short Guide to Leading and Lagging Indicators of Safety Performance

e ectively doing so will compound the success of your improvement e orts.

Finding the perfect measure of safety is a di cult task. What you want is to
measure both the bottom-line results of safety as well as how well your facility is
doing at preventing accidents and incidents. To do this, you will use a combination
of lagging and leading indicators of safety performance.

Lagging indicators of safety performance

What is a lagging indicator?

Lagging indicators measure a companys incidents in the form of past accident

statistics.

Examples include:

Injury frequency and severity

OSHA recordable injuries
Lost workdays
Workers compensation costs

Why use lagging indicators?

Lagging indicators are the traditional safety metrics used to indicate progress
toward compliance with safety rules. These are the bottom-line numbers that
evaluate the overall e ectiveness of safety at your facility. They tell you how many
people got hurt and how badly.

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.

Leading indicators of safety performance

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9/8/2017 A Short Guide to Leading and Lagging Indicators of Safety Performance

Leading indicators of safety performance

What is a leading indicator?

A leading indicator is a measure preceding or indicating a future event used to

drive and measure activities carried out to prevent and control injury.

Examples include:

Safety training
Ergonomic opportunities identi ed and corrected
Reduction of MSD risk factors
Employee perception surveys
Safety audits

Why use leading indicators?

Leading indicators are focused on future safety performance and continuous

improvement. These measures are proactive in nature and report what employees
are doing on a regular basis to prevent injuries.

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, and thats what were after!

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

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9/8/2017 A Short Guide to Leading and Lagging Indicators of Safety Performance

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

How Caterpillar used leading indicators to

create world-class safety
An article on EHS Today titled, Caterpillar: Using Leading Indicators to Create
World-Class Safety recaps an interview with two Caterpillar executives who
explained how they were able to successfully transition to a culture that utilizes
leading indicators for safety.

According to the execs at Caterpillar, traditional metrics can help companies tell
the score at the end of the game, but they dont help employers understand the
strengths and weaknesses of their safety e orts and cannot help managers predict
future success.

By utilizing a Safety Strategic Improvement Process (SIP) that emphasized leading

indicators of safety, they saw an 85% reduction of injuries and $450 million in
direct/indirect cost savings.

According to the article, the critical elements of the SIP included:

Enterprise-wide statement of safety culture.

Global process, tools and metrics.
Top-down leadership of and engagement with the process.
Clearly de ned and linked roles and responsibilities.
Clearly de ned accountability.
Consistent methods establishing targets and reporting performance.
Consistent criteria for prioritizing issues and aligning resources.
Recognition for positive behavior and performance.

Conclusion
To improve the safety performance of your facility, you should use a combination of
leading and lagging indicators.

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9/8/2017 A Short Guide to Leading and Lagging Indicators of Safety Performance

When using leading indicators, its important to make your metrics based on impact.
For example, dont just track the number and attendance of safety meetings and
training sessions measure the impact of the safety meeting by determining the
number of people who met the key learning objectives of the meeting / training.

Over to you
What metrics do you use to measure your facilitys safety performance? Do you use
a combination of leading and lagging indicators?

Feel free to drop by the comments and let us know.

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About the Author

Mark Middlesworth is the Founder of Ergonomics Plus, and
still enjoys educating and motivating workplace athletes
toward better health each and every day. Get more
ergonomics and injury prevention advice from Mark by
signing up for a (free) Basic Resource Center account.

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