Implementing a powerful safety culture throughout an organization is essential for keeping employees safe. Striving for a zero-incident rate means going beyond analyzing incident statistics and measuring workdays lost, due to injury. It means making safety an intrinsic part of every task within the company.
You’ll want to be proactive when it comes to safety at work. Leading indicators will help you prevent incidents from happening, and help measure and monitor your organization’s safety efforts and see what can be improved. While lagging indicators show the bottom line effects clearly.
Lagging Indicators are limited
Many companies look at incident data and days lost to measure their safety efforts and analyze problem areas. The problem is that these statistics, also called lagging indicators, report about things that have already happened. They do not give any insight in how well your safety efforts prevent incidents and accidents.
When a company has a low incident or injury rate, safety may find its place at the bottom of the agenda. Although there can be various safety hazards present that could cause future incidents or fatalities. This is why leading indicators are crucial.