Far too often, emphasis on job safety only happens after an injury or an incident occurs. These are called reactive measures or lagging indicators. However, the more effective way to improve overall safety in the workplace is by taking a combined approach and focusing on reactive, proactive and predictive leading indicator measures. 

OSHA has embarked on a project to create a leading indicator resource for employers. It is intended to improve safety and health management systems by providing examples of leading indicators and how to use them with existing safety metrics.

In 2023, OSHA issued a call for comments and input to stakeholders to gather information on how companies were already using leading indicators. Information gathered included OSHA incident rates, common leading indicators, metrics for reporting with management and how organizations determine effectiveness. 

Additionally, OSHA collected details on linking indicators to outcome data, how employers encouraged the use of leading and lagging indicators to improve safety, and any challenges organizations encountered.

The American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP) collected feedback from their roughly 35,000 members and summarized responses to OSHA’s questions. According to that summary, one of the most significant findings was, “Understanding risk management expects proactive activities to reduce risk, most of our responding organizations indicate they focus time/resources on both leading and lagging indicators. This allows companies and organizations to designate resources for areas of risk where they can have the most impact. Focusing time/resources on proactive activities provides the opportunity to have the most value to risk reduction. It is important to note that leading indicators are factors that to some extent can be controlled and also help raise awareness with workers and hold management accountable to continual improvement of safety and health risks and systems.” 

This OSHA initiative comes as a follow-up to the agency’s 2019 publication, “Using Leading Indicators to Improve Safety and Health Outcomes.” This document launched the agency’s quest to create an employer resource and serve as part of the foundation for any future guidance.

When issuing the call for information, OSHA indicated in the Federal Register, “[It] can be used by employers to help develop or improve their safety and health management system (SHMS). OSHA asks for stakeholder input on leading indicators that they currently use and the effectiveness of those indicators in managing their SHMS. Many employers solely use the ‘OSHA rates’ such as the Days Away, Restricted or Transferred (DART) and Total Case Incident Rate (TCIR) as their only tools to evaluate the success of their safety program. If their rates are low, senior management may determine their program is working, and if their rates are too high, they may determine there is a problem in their safety and health program. However, both DART and TCIR are examples of lagging indicators that reflect events that have already taken place and are not predictive in identifying and establishing corrective actions before an event occurs. 

“While lagging indicators can alert an employer to a failure in their SHMS program, leading indicators can enable preventative action to address that failure or hazard before it becomes an incident. A good program uses leading indicators to drive change and lagging indicators to measure its effectiveness.”

As a point of reference, lagging indicators are typically easier to develop and establish by calculating injury rates. 

Leading indicators are harder to quantify because they can be observation-, operations- or systems-based. Observation-based indicators are collected by assessing behaviors and hazardous conditions to determine risk. They are attributed to an employer’s infrastructure and may include risk assessments, risk mitigation through improved hierarchy of controls, preventive maintenance, training efforts or schedule management. 

Systems-based indicators pertain to management factors in a safety system. This may include psyche, culture and design.

According to the OSHA publication, “Leading indicators can play a vital role in preventing worker fatalities, injuries, and illnesses and strengthening other safety and health outcomes in the workplace. 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.”

After developing a comprehensive safety program, leaders still have to consider lagging indicators. Ask the following questions: How does successfully controlling a particular risk appear? There should be consensus on the desired outcome. Can the desired or adverse outcome be measured? A metric for measuring the outcome should be defined with an acceptable deviation. 

Leading indicators consist of determining the most important activity or process necessary for consistently achieving the desired outcome whether the variation is dynamic or fixed and the metrics used to measure critical inputs. These items are part of the initial planning process. 

Additionally, it includes identifying the benchmarked processes or functions and identifying parameters to measure against. Then the actual data collection and analysis of performance gaps must happen.

Next, share findings with appropriate personnel, set goals and implement preventative actions. The employer must periodically review and evaluate benefits and determine if incident rates have been reduced.

Most employers are tracking leading indicators, including safety training, recognition programs, and area audits or safety walk-throughs. Their effectiveness in a safety program is measured by employee engagement, proactiveness and follow-through on safety issues. It is also determined by leader engagement and trust or follow-through.

Safety research indicates that employers tracking more than five separate leading indicators had higher incident rates. Organizations that focus on three to five areas tend to have lower incident rates and be most successful. Employers that focus on too many may feel daunted and have a hard time managing them all. 

Near-miss programs

In recent years, many employers have implemented near-miss programs. However, there is considerable debate over whether near-misses should be considered leading or lagging indicators. The confusion stems from recording only potential injuries. Near-misses are measurable and quantifiable, but any subsequent safety modifications are reactive. The consensus is that they are lagging indicators. 

Given the current political climate, it is uncertain what progress OSHA will make on this project. However, it is important to know it is likely on the horizon, regardless of when it happens. Independent of federal resources, there are private and nonprofit alternatives for employers to turn to when creating or improving leading indicator components to written safety programs and practices. 

Make no mistake about it, though—every employer can and should use a combined approach to ensure workers are kept safe.

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