Neither of these metrics is particularly meaningful or insightful

Scaffolding. Neither of these metrics is particularly meaningful or insightful, as they fail to indicate severity, nor are they risk-based. They provide incident rates based on the treatment the injury received, but they do not generally relate to either how severe the injury was, or more importantly, how severe the injury could have been.

Thankfully, most of us do not experience enough incidents with actual life-altering or life-threatening consequences to perform meaningful analysis. But if we include in our analysis incidents and near misses with potentially serious consequences, we significantly expand our opportunity for learning.

It follows, then, that the performance metrics we use to measure our safety performance should align with this philosophy. Most of us today rely on “traditional” metrics, like the aforementioned TRIR or LTIR, to measure our safety performance. 

Analyzing incidents’ potential consequences allows us to begin evaluating barriers – how many barriers and the effectiveness of those barriers in mitigating either the probability or the likely outcome of events. So, it’s not the severity of the actual consequence that determines factors like how extensively we investigate an incident or whether it triggers any number of post-incident actions. Rather, it is the severity of the potential consequences that determines these activities.