Leading Indicators Key to Prevention

This article was developed and submitted by DuPont, a World Safety Declaration charter signer.

Typical safety management practices include traditional reporting tools such as monthly status reports. However, more effective methods involve commitment on the part of management to reserve dedicated time for interactions leading to continuous improvement and true management of change. In addition to trailing and current indicators, forward-thinking leadership requires leading indicators which enable the understanding of the effectiveness of the safety efforts underway at an operation. Such interactions serve not only as a way to prevent injuries, but also as a way of continuously improving productivity and quality in plants. 

The  same strong operating discipline that is required to create a safety culture is needed to drive world-class performance in productivity and quality. Employing this discipline can have a huge human, social and financial impact on employees, customers and shareholders.  When safety professionals employ this operating discipline, they are able to provide management with leading indicator metrics that assess the effectiveness of their organization’s efforts.

Comparison of Indicator Types
Leading indicators measure proactive efforts. These indicators can uncover weaknesses before they develop into full-fledged problems. Leading indicators are effective predictors of safety performance because they focus on the types of issues that are key to successful safety performance — things like leadership, involvement and the beliefs of people. Some examples of leading indicators include: quality of the audit program, analysis of process hazards reviews, emergency response plan, near-miss reporting and analysis, employee attitudes and perceptions, quality and quantity of employee safety suggestions, scope of the training plan and compliance with engineering and government standards and guidelines.

In comparison, more traditional measurements such as trailing indicators and current indicators are a reaction to past and current efforts. For example, trailing indicators represent a historical approach to safety. While the use of trailing indicators is important, they serve as a report card, revealing how well we have done in the past, where our problems have been and past trends in our safety performance. They include measures such as: injury and illness statistics, process releases statistics, vehicle accident statistics, disability costs, litigation costs, workers’ compensation costs and regulatory citations and penalties. The use of trailing indicators can only take us so far.  

Current indicators measure the degree to which safety has been institutionalized and management systems have been implemented. They provide a measure of potential loss events. Some current indicators are: safe and unsafe acts indices, incident investigation reporting and analysis, serious potential incident frequency, safety audit findings, occupational medical visits, training records and effectiveness, action on past employee perception surveys and attendance at and quality of safety meetings. Current indicators tell us where we are now. They help us evaluate how well our management systems are working, and they can also help predict potential losses over the short-term.

The proactive measurement of safety performance through leading indicators provides the best opportunity to prevent harm and losses from happening at all. When injury and loss rates are low, measuring only the “output” does not provide adequate feedback for managing safety. Therefore, defined leading indicators are critical to preventing accidents and incidents. Most simply viewed, a leading indicator serves as an early warning of potential injury.

Determining Leading Indicators
Using experience and knowledge to infer broad relationships between facts and results helps turn mere facts into leading indicators. For example, a sense of fatigue indicates approaching the limit of capacity to work. Treating fatigue as a simple fact may suggest rest, but interpreting it as a leading indicator points to re-balancing the effort required and the resources available for a broader injury prevention approach. Or observing materials, tools and equipment left on the walk-path would cause us to remove these tripping hazards. But treating clutter as an indicator of poor attitude towards safety should drive us to motivate the organization to live up to higher standards of safe behavior.

Leading indicators become valuable tools only if they are used to take corrective action in order to negate their implications on the outcome. Since this concept is the essence of process control, this methodology can be useful in using leading indicator data to help manage safety performance. Figure 1 shows how comparing desired performance with an aspect of actual performance (leading indicators) generates correction. As performance approaches the goal, the required correction diminishes. But even small deviations create corrective action. Maintaining performance at the desired level to achieve and maintain goal performance is determined by both the effectiveness of the process and the relationship of the leading indicators to the output and results.

Attributes Of Effective Leading Indicators
Many safety performance parameters can be used as leading indicators, but some are better than others as tools to help improve performance. Characteristics of effective leading indicators in managing safety are:

• Simple, close connectivity to the outcome/results
• Objectively and reliably measurable
• Different groups interpret it in the same way
• Broadly applicable across company operations
• Easily and accurately communicated

Benefits of Leading Indicators
Leading Indicators track incremental steps to improvement, informing the organization of its movement toward performance goals. They enable managers and other employees to access the quality of their efforts, the rate of their improvement and the health of their programs. And they can be used as well by small work teams as by larger plant groups. Most importantly, leading indicators drive continuous improvement in an organization that results in safer employees. By attacking the base of the hazard pyramid to reduce at risk behavior and gaps in safe thinking, important differences are made that reduce injuries and fatalities.

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