How To Measure Safety Performance

Most businesses have traditionally judged safety performance by reporting and monitoring their Lost-Time Injury (LTI) rate eg number of LTI injuries per million work hours.

A lost-time injury essentially includes any work-related injury or illness requiring one shift or more off work.

Old Standard - AS 1885

For many decades LTI rate was the only common measure available and was specified in Australian Standard AS 1885: 1990, which dated back to 1976.

This standard has long been out-of-date (when older than 10 years) but was only officially withdrawn* in November 2022.

* Standard withdrawn from sale by Intertek Inform, formerly SAI Global the distributor of Australian Standards.

Executive’s Focus on LTI Rate

Executives and directors have traditionally used LTI rate, almost exclusively, as an easy and quick way to compare occupational health and safety (OHS) performance between businesses or sites.

Many people are still using and only comfortable with LTI rate, although total recordable injury frequency rate (TRIFR) is increasingly being used. Note: TRIFR term is a tautology as something is either a rate or a frequency, not both, but the abbreviation pronounced “triffer” sounds better.

Unintended Consequences

As result of the executive focus on LTI rate or TRIFR, every lost-time injury tends to be closely scrutinised and options to exclude it or re-classify the reported work injury is explored by safety and human resources staff, in order to achieve corporate safety targets, or to avoid operations appearing to be “unsafe” or suffering declining performance.

Today, most progressive businesses recognise that LTI rate is only one measure of safety performance, being a “lag” or “loss” measure, and that “lead indicators” can also assist to gain a more complete picture of an organisation’s safety performance.

New International Standard - ISO 45,004

The first edition of a new International Standard, ISO 45,004: 2024: OHS Mgt – Guidelines on Performance Evaluation, has been released.

This standard follows the format of other recent ISO safety standards eg ISO 45,001: OHS Mgt Systems, by taking a holistic view of measuring safety performance, which starts at the board room, through acquisitions, planning processes, design and maintenance of facilities and systems, safety meetings, surveys, incident investigations, audits, and management reviews.

The new ISO standard includes lag and lead indicators for performance evaluation, as exampled below.

Lag Indicators

Lag indicators, also called loss indicators, measure such things as:

• Number of first aid injuries,

• Number of lost-time injuries (LTIs),

• LTI rate,

• Total Recordable rate (TRIFR),

• Days lost per worker per year, and

• Workers compensation cost per worker per year.

Lead Indicators

Lead indicators are a measure of things done that help reduce the likelihood of work injury or illness occurring.

For example:

• Corporate OHS objectives and targets,

• Percentage of procedures updated per schedule,

• Safety training conducted per schedule,

• Worker participation,

• Hazard reporting,

• Elimination of hazards,

• Safety inspections,

• Risk assessments,

• Degree of completion of safety business plans,

• Safety culture (percentage positive response to safety culture survey),

• Top management safety walks etc.

For more examples of safety activities you can implement in your business, that have been linked to better performance call us on 03 8544 4300 or email us to register for our next safety performance benchmarking survey. You will also receive a free copy of our last benchmarking report.