Traditionally safety managers, and the executives they advise, use WHS lag indicators such as injury frequency rates to measure the organisation’s safety performance. Some organisations still rely primarily or solely on these measures.

The problem with this approach is that it relies on incurring injuries to workers to create a WHS indicator (versus preventing harm), and by the time you know there’s a problem, the causes are well embedded and harder to fix.

Measuring the precursors to harm or measuring preventative activities (using lead indicators such as the number of safety inspections and audits undertaken) can therefore provide an organisation with the opportunity to safeguard their workers and improve their safety performance by preventing incidents. Spotting minor failures and trends in the results of systematic inspections or testing can help the organisation to identify and correct deficiencies in management systems and work processes before they turn into serious problems.

There is a pitfall however. Reports on lead indicators to executive management might show that a target has been set for X number of safety inspections to be undertaken in Y period, and that this target has been met. Such reporting typically provides little or no information on the quality of those inspections.

Were they “tick and flick” exercises completed by a jaded supervisor endeavouring to keep the boss off his/her back? Was the entire quota of inspections rushed into the last week of the period because everyone felt they were too busy to do them regularly? Were the inspections undertaken by someone who had the training and experience to identify a problem if they saw one?

In these circumstances, the WHS lead indicator report can look wonderful while the real safety position is actually quite poor, leaving the organisation and management team vulnerable to WHS beaches because of planning and decisions based on poor data.

What managers should do to avoid this situation is to take proactive action, including:

  1. Set some quality measures around the performance of any lead indicators being used so that the executive management team (EMT) can have confidence in relying on those indicators
  2. Undertake detailed trend analysis on the lead indicators, rather than relying on periodic results in isolation
  3. Provide training to all staff in risk management and in using the organisation’s management systems, so that every worker is an active member of the team working together to identify and prevent safety risks (not just a passenger assuming that safety is the responsibility of the safety manager)
  4. Ensure that the tools used for WHS Inspections and audits are correctly setup to so that they produce results that add value.

Then the use of lead indicators can be truly the sign of a sophisticated and forward-looking organisation implementing best practice safety management, and not a hidden pitfall lying in wait for an unsuspecting EMT.

Please contact QRMC for more information.