Leading indicators are proactive, preventive and predictive measures that provide information about the effective performance of your safety and health activities. They measure events leading up to injuries, illnesses and other incidents and reveal potential problems in your safety and health program. In contrast, lagging indicators measure the occurrence and frequency of events that happened in the past, such as the number or rate of injuries, illnesses and fatalities.
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. A good program uses leading indicators to drive change and lagging indicators to measure effectiveness.
For example, one good leading indicator might be the amount of time it takes to respond to a safety hazard report. A decrease in the response time may demonstrate an increased awareness in safety and managers’ commitment to workplace safety. Conversely, an increase in response time could signal a lack of management concern, which could mean that hazards are likely to remain uncontrolled, and incidents are more likely to occur. Furthermore, workers may decide to discontinue reporting hazards if they feel that management is not being responsive to their concerns. This can affect morale, which could have broad implications for the workplace.
Benefits
Leading indicators can play a vital role in preventing worker fatalities, injuries and illnesses, as well as strengthening safety and health outcomes in the workplace. Employers that use leading indicators as a tool for achieving these goals have a substantial advantage over their competitors. By taking deliberate and measured actions that can prevent fatalities, injuries and illnesses, these employers demonstrate their commitment to maintaining a socially responsible workplace that values workers. By strengthening key elements of their safety and health programs, they also can improve their overall organizational performance.
In addition to the social benefits, employers that use leading indicators to find and fix hazards can realize direct savings to their bottom line. These include savings in repair costs, production costs, workers’ compensation costs, and other legal and regulatory costs that are commonly associated with incidents. For example, by fixing hazards that lead to roadblocks in production, employers may be able
to complete daily tasks more efficiently and reduce production costs related to those activities.
SMART principles
Good leading indicators are based on SMART principles, meaning they are Specific, Measurable, Accountable, Reasonable and Timely:
- Specific: Does your leading indicator provide specifics for the action that you will take to minimize risk from a hazard or improve a program area?
- Measurable: Is your leading indicator presented as a number, rate or percentage that allows you to track and evaluate clear trends over time?
- Accountable: Does your leading indicator track an item that is relevant to your goal?
- Reasonable: Can you reasonably achieve the goal that you set for your leading indicator?
- Timely: Are you tracking your leading indicator regularly enough to spot meaningful trends from your data within your desired timeframe?
There is no “one size fits all” way to use leading indicators. Employers with newer programs may use indicators that focus on starting a program, while employers with more mature programs may use them to monitor how close they are to achieving higher performance targets. Some employers may also find it helpful to limit the number of leading indicators they start out with or how many they use at any one time. How employers assign who will track and carry out goals for leading indicators can vary based on the size of the business, who the business has on staff, whether the business has a safety manager, and the scope of job duties of the employers’ workforce.
Using leading indicators
Leading indicators are a valuable tool that you can use to make measurable and long-lasting improvements to safety and health outcomes in the workplace. They can be valuable 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. Use the checklist below to get started today.
- Identify your top problem areas. For hazards, review your injury logs and results from your hazard assessments. Start with the hazard with the greatest risk of harming workers by evaluating the severity of the potential exposure and the likelihood that an incident could occur. Prioritize hazards over other areas of your program, particularly if a threat is imminent.
- For other program elements, talk with your workers about what areas you could improve. For data that you are already collecting, determine whether it is an area that you should prioritize.
- Consider what actions you could take to address your key areas. Talk with your workers and anyone else with knowledge of the issue that can provide suggestions.
- Set a goal and use leading indicators to reach it. Make an informed decision about what your goal should be and how long it might take to achieve. Choose a leading indicator that can help you to achieve your goal over time.
- Collect the data. Begin collecting the leading indicator data for the time period you decided on as well as the data for your goal during that same time period.
- Periodically review the results. Assemble the results into a graph to determine whether there is a positive relationship between your leading indicator and your goal. Did the action that you took help you to achieve your goal? If not, try something else.
- Remember that just one or two indicators can make a positive impact. OSHA recommends customizing the type and number of indicators to your needs, resources, and abilities as they evolve over time.
This article is excerpted from a publication titled, “Using Leading Indicators to Improve Safety and Health Outcomes,” published by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. To read the complete publication, visit osha.gov/leading-indicators.
SIDEBAR: Workplace injuries declining
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 5,333 workers died on the job in 2019 (3.5 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers)—on average, more than 100 a week or about 15 deaths every day. Fortunately, due to increased safety requirements, worker deaths in America are down-on average, from about 38 worker deaths a day in 1970 to 15 a day in 2019. Worker injuries and illnesses are also down-from 10.9 incidents per 100 workers in 1972 to 2.8 per 100 in 2019.