Safety Statistics

Our injury rates tell the whole story don’t they?

Recording safety incidents and using them to calculate commonly accepted safety statistics is an important tool to measure health and safety performance. It’s a cautionary tale that even something that seems as straightforward as recording workplace fatalities, can still generate uncertainty and controversy. Consider the following 2019 CBC report:

“Close to 1,000 Canadians die each year because of their jobs, according to official numbers from Canada’s workers’ compensation agencies. But a new study says that figure is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the true extent of work-related deaths across the country. The study – titled Work-related deaths in Canada -argues the widely quoted statistics … only take into account approved compensation claims. As a result, thousands of deaths – such as workers exempt from coverage, stress-induced suicides, commuting fatalities and occupational disease – are missing from occupational health and safety statistics…”

So while we recognize the value obtained from our safety statistics, it’s important to recognize that using a standard tool does not guarantee that we are getting the whole story.

Our lost time rates are pretty good, I think we’re doing a good job

We calculate standard safety statistics because:

• They are an accepted way to benchmark our performance against others in our industry;
• They are the statistics that Workers Compensation uses to set our premiums;
• We are required to report certain incidents by law;
• Our stakeholders and our clients ask us to produce them.

Some examples of the standard data that we record for statistical purposes include:

• Lost time injuries (LTI) – where a worker can’t report for their next work shift;
• Medical aid injuries – where a worker required an intervention beyond first aid;
• Modified work injuries – duties were modified so a worker could return to work;
• Serious injuries – various measures of seriousness including hospital stays, certain types of trauma, etc.;
• Environmental incidents – spills, discharges and the like that must be reported to the government;
• Vehicle and driving incidents.

These incidents are usually converted to some standard frequency and severity rate statistic. For instance, LTI frequency might be reported per 100 employees or 200,000 hours worked, or LTI severity might be reported as the total number of days away from work per 100 employees or 200,000 hours worked. Some incidents might be grouped into a Total Recordable Injury Rate (TRIR) that would include all those more serious injury incidents that you are generally required to report.

These measures share a common attribute; they all should ideally be zero. Reporting them does not necessarily in of itself lead to improvements in our safety system. They are referred to as “Lagging Indicators” because they are an “after-the-fact” measure of performance.

What safety statistics can I use to improve my safety system?

In addition to the traditional lagging indicators we should also include leading Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Leading indicators provide information that we can use to improve our safety system. Some examples of leading indicators include:

• Near miss and hazards reported;
• Corrective actions identified and completed;
• Workplace inspections carried out;
• Safety meetings conducted and safety communications issued;
• Employee safety surveys conducted;
• Internal audits conducted.

Implicit in these leading KPIs is performing a subsequent analysis to determine trends and to measure safety system effectiveness.

Best practices

While we don’t want to dismiss the importance of standard scorecard safety statistics, it’s also important to develop significant leading indicators that we can measure objectively. We can then use the safety statistics developed from these KPIs to promote continuous improvement, measure the overall health of our safety system and help focus our efforts on problem areas before an incident occurs.