Lagging Indicators: Using Incident Metrics to Improve Safety Performance
Overview
Lagging indicators are reactive safety metrics that measure outcomes after incidents occur, including injury rates, lost workdays, workers’ compensation costs, and severity rates. While they tell you what happened, they provide critical data for identifying trends, measuring program effectiveness, and prioritizing improvement efforts.
Why This Is Important
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Lagging indicators provide objective data about safety performance over time and across departments. When analyzed properly, they reveal patterns, highlight problem areas, and demonstrate whether safety initiatives are working. Understanding these metrics helps everyone recognize that safety performance is measurable and improvable.
Best Practices & Safety Tips
- Understand key lagging indicators: Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR), Lost Time Incident Rate (LTIR), Days Away/Restricted/Transfer Rate (DART)
- Track severity in addition to frequency—a single fatality is far more significant than multiple minor first-aid incidents
- Analyze trends over time rather than reacting to individual data points; look for patterns across months or years
- Compare performance across departments, shifts, or job types to identify where risks are highest
- Investigate spikes in lagging indicators to determine root causes and implement targeted corrective actions
- Balance lagging indicators with leading indicators like safety observations, training completion, and near-miss reporting
- Share lagging indicator data transparently with employees—visibility drives accountability and improvement
- Celebrate improvements in lagging indicators to reinforce positive safety culture changes
- Use lagging indicators to justify resource allocation for safety initiatives with measurable ROI
- Remember that low lagging indicators don’t guarantee safety—zero incidents today doesn’t mean zero risk tomorrow
Discussion Questions
- What’s the difference between lagging and leading safety indicators?
- How has our facility’s TRIR or injury rate changed over the past year, and what does that tell us?
- Why might a department with zero recordable injuries still have significant safety risks?
- How can we use injury data to identify which safety initiatives should be prioritized?
- What other outcomes besides injuries should we track as lagging indicators?
Takeaway
Lagging indicators provide the scorecard for safety performance, revealing whether our efforts are working and where to focus improvement resources. While preventing incidents is always the goal, analyzing outcomes when they occur transforms data into actionable intelligence that drives continuous safety improvement.