Leading vs Lagging Indicators

I read so much info arguing over whether leading indicators such as onboarding, training and auditing are far more relevant than your leading stats such as incident rates.

My perspective is both are vital and we need to get away from favouring either. My main focus is though that both can be really misleading and deliver a false sense of security which as we know can lead to catastrophic events.

It must be very satisfying for business leader seeing compliance stats at 100%? "Great work team"! All employees have completed onboarding with 100% training compliance. All audits completed and corrective actions in hand or completed. But..........?

What gaps do you have in your on boarding, training, JSAs, audits is probably the most important question you should be asking. If you have verified they are 100% gap free (tough ask) and you are 100% compliant then great. Well done and deserving of a pat on the back.

If you are seeing incidents then a big question is are they due to gaps in training? Did your audit and inspection miss something? Can you find the gap or are you gonna assume all leading aspects are complete and go to the good old human error factor? We are after all human!

If incidents continue however what is your course of action? Do we continue looking elsewhere for immediate and root causes? Continue down the human error road and maybe even develop a program aimed at closing that gap. I haven't mentioned the well known re-train corrective action so commonly seen to rectify a root cause finding? Head in hands time for many reading this but we all know it happens.

So leading indicators whilst vitally important can lead to risk and at times if your business or the people running it are stubborn or just inexperienced then they can be dangerous.

Lagging indicators on the other hand can be just as tricky to decipher. Do you truly see the potential consequence? Often minor incidents such as first aids could of had far more serious consequences and it was only luck that prevented this. Sometimes incidents that are deemed recordable have less consequence. Do you accurately risk rate your incidents as part of the investigation process or do you just use the actual consequence?

We often spend a lot of time analyzing both leading and lagging stats. If you do have exemplary stats then great but please don't let complacency set in. Maybe spend some time ensuring gaps haven't crept in. You may have been riding some luck? Also keep in mind any changes you may have adopted and ask do we have them fully covered? Finally if you don't have great leading or lagging numbers then investigate why and close the gap asp.

For small / medium size businesses out there without embedded dedicated safety staff then it really could be a good time to reach out to a consultant for support. Sounds expensive?? Not at all! It really can and will make a difference.