Trailing Safety Indicators: Enhancing Their Value Through Statistics

Trailing or lagging safety indicators are after-the-fact indicators which measure events or consequences that have occurred. These events or consequences are often associated with unwanted events, such as injuries, illnesses, workers’ compensation costs, hospital visits, notices of violation, regulatory fines and litigation costs. By measuring performance results over past time periods, such indicators are also reactive, since they are essentially reacting to previous conditions and circumstances. These indicators are also termed incident-based indicators, since organizations typically react to the occurrence of these specific unwanted incidents (e.g., fatalities, lost workday cases).OSHA-based measures are one type of trailing indicator. These measures are the most common type of safety and health performance metrics being collected and used by organizations. In particular, the recordable incident rate (also known as the total recordable case rate or TRC rate) is the most prevalently used OSHA-based measure (Coffey, 2009). The TRC rate is a mathematical calculation that describes the number of OSHA recordable incidents which a company experiences per 200,000 hours worked (e.g., 100 full-time employees) in any given period. Another common OSHA-based trailing indicator is the days away, restrictions or transfers (DART) case rate, which describes the number of recordable injuries and illnesses per 200,000 hours worked (e.g., 100 full-time employees) that results in days away from work, restricted work activity, and/or job transfer that a company has experienced in a given time period.