To prevent serious incidents and fatalities, we must measure what truly matters. Traditional safety metrics such as total recordable incident rate focus on frequency, not severity. SIFs aren’t driven by frequent low-severity injuries. They’re driven by uncontrolled energy, weak safeguards, and high-hazard activities or conditions.
Today’s workforce is made up of an increasing number of contractors, subcontractors and temporary labor, for which these traditional metrics are used outside of their original intent. This has created a business system in which large assumptions are made in screening in “safe” contractors based on a faulty metric, or screening out better contractors because of lack of context.
A low injury rate may look good on paper, but it can give a false sense of safety. To reduce SIFs, we need metrics that help us understand our capacity to manage SIF risk … before someone gets seriously hurt.
The pitfall of traditional injury rates
Many of the worst industrial incidents in history occurred at operations with a primary focus on reducing OSHA recordables. Managing OSHA rates isn’t the same as managing SIF risks. Serious incidents are often preceded by close calls and weak signals that go unnoticed when we’re only tracking minor injuries.
A study conducted by the RAND Corp. found that states with low nonfatal injury rates often had high fatality rates. And vice versa. Why? Because better injury reporting often reflects stronger cultures and more opportunities to learn.
Leading vs. lagging indicators
Lagging indicators tell us what already happened: injuries, illnesses, fires, spills or fatalities. They’re important for learning, but too late for prevention.
Leading indicators focus on the systems, safeguards and behaviors that reduce risk in the first place. High-quality leading indicators for SIF prevention can include:
- Verifying critical safeguards are installed and effective for all high-hazard activities and conditions.
- Closure metrics for corrective actions and risk mitigation tied to high-hazard activities, conditions and events.
- Robust processes for reporting and learning from SIF risks, potential SIFs and actual SIFs.
- Engagement metrics for leadership and worker involvement in serious risk reduction and control verification.
The best leading indicators don’t just measure activity, they assess whether risk is being effectively controlled.
New standards for smarter metrics
To support smarter measurement, the ASTM standard (ASTM E2920) for serious incidents is being updated and expanded to help organizations focus on SIF prevention:
ASTM SIF Classification Standards: These standards are being designed to classify and define actual and potential SIFs – including serious injuries, illnesses, fires, environmental releases and other high-impact incidents.
Emphasis on learning from pSIFs, SIF risks and higher severity incidents: Two of the ASTM standards will stress the importance of investigating and learning from pSIFs and SIF risks – even when no harm occurred – to ensure critical safeguards are present, effective and verified.
Global benchmarking: These standards support consistent tracking of serious incidents, allowing meaningful comparisons across industries, countries and time.
Shifting the focus
Organizations that lead in SIF prevention aren’t only tracking injury frequency. They’re managing high-hazard activities and conditions by building resilience in safeguards and controls. They’re:
- Focused on the right risks, not the easiest ones to count
- Learning from pSIFs, SIF risks and serious incidents
- Installing, maintaining and verifing critical safeguards
- Engaging everyone in conversations about serious risks
When we shift our focus to building resilience of safeguards for controlling what could cause the most harm, we move from safety compliance to safety performance.
What’s ahead?
In the next column, we’ll look at how to identify high-risk activities and reduce SIF risks by ensuring critical safeguards are in place. Better metrics matter only if they lead to better decisions, resulting in resilient safeguards and controls and producing safer outcomes for workers.
