𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐬𝐚𝐟𝐞𝐭𝐲 𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜 𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐣𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬…

You’re measuring history.

Most organizations proudly track OSHA recordables, lost-time injuries, and Days Away, Restricted, or Transferred (DART) rates. Those numbers are important, but they all have one thing in common:

They tell you what has already happened.

They don’t tell you what’s about to happen.

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, effective safety and health programs emphasize finding and controlling hazards before workers are injured. That means looking beyond lagging indicators and paying attention to the activities that prevent incidents in the first place.

The organizations building the strongest safety cultures spend just as much time discussing questions like:

• Are employees reporting near misses?
• Are hazards being corrected quickly?
• Are supervisors having meaningful safety conversations?
• Are corrective actions actually being completed?
• Are we identifying risks before they become incidents?

Those are leading indicators.

They don’t predict the future with certainty, but they provide valuable insight into whether your safety management system is becoming stronger—or slowly drifting in the wrong direction.

💡 Here’s this week’s challenge:

During your next leadership meeting, spend the first ten minutes discussing one leading indicator before reviewing injury statistics.

Ask your team:

“What evidence do we have that our safety system is improving this week?”

You might discover the most important safety conversations happen long before anyone gets hurt.

💬 Let’s start the discussion: If you could track only one leading indicator in your organization, what would it be?

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