“What gets measured gets managed — but what we choose to measure defines what we value.”
— Adapted from Peter Drucker

The Shift from LTIFR: Understanding the Change:

For years, the Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) served as a primary metric for assessing workplace safety. However, its limitations have become increasingly apparent. LTIFR focuses solely on incidents resulting in lost work time, neglecting the broader context of workplace safety and potentially encouraging underreporting of minor incidents to maintain favourable statistics.

Recognizing these shortcomings, Safe Work Australia announced the retirement of the LTIFR calculator, effective March 2025. This decision underscores a move towards more comprehensive and meaningful safety metrics that better reflect the complexities of modern workplaces.

Embracing a Holistic Approach to Safety Metrics 📊

When it comes to evaluating safety performance, what we measure matters. Traditionally, metrics like LTIFR and TRIFR have dominated dashboards and boardroom discussions. But these numbers, while easy to calculate, offer a limited view of what’s really happening in a workplace.

A holistic approach to safety metrics involves expanding the lens beyond incidents that cause time off work. It considers the many layers of a workplace: from the behaviours of frontline workers to the resilience of systems, the clarity of procedures, and the engagement of leadership.

Modern reporting frameworks are starting to ask better questions:

• Are safety observations being actioned?

• Are supervisors having regular conversations about risk?

• Are workers reporting minor hazards, or is there a culture of silence?

By incorporating leading indicators, those proactive measures like safety participation, training completion, inspection results, and safety interactions, we begin to understand not just whether people are getting hurt, but why, and more importantly, what’s being done to prevent it.

Some progressive companies are even blending WHS data with HR metrics to identify psychosocial risks, like workload issues or poor team dynamics. This interdisciplinary approach reflects the evolving nature of safety, where physical hazards, mental health, and culture all intertwine.

The outcome? A more authentic, three-dimensional picture of workplace health and safety—one that values learning, not just compliance.

The Shift from Lagging to Leading Indicators 🔄

For years, businesses have tracked safety in reverse, counting incidents after they’ve happened and using them to judge performance. But while lagging indicators like LTIs and medical treatment cases have value, they are inherently reactive.

A leading indicator approach turns this model on its head. It focuses on behaviours, conditions, and systems that can predict and prevent harm before it occurs.

Imagine two worksites:

• Site A has zero injuries last quarter, but also zero hazard reports, zero safety discussions, and workers who hesitate to speak up.

• Site B had a few minor incidents, but logged 40 near-miss reports, conducted regular safety audits, and implemented corrective actions.

Which site is actually safer?

Leading indicators aren’t about sugar-coating poor results. They’re about shifting the focus from what happened to what could happen and using that foresight to take meaningful action.

Examples of strong leading indicators include:

• Frequency and quality of pre-start meetings

• Percentage of reported hazards that are closed out on time

• Worker engagement in safety initiatives

• Management visibility and site walk-throughs

• Training uptake and knowledge retention

It’s this proactive curiosity, asking “Where might the next incident come from?”, that builds safer, more resilient organisations.

The Role of Technology in Advancing Safety Metrics

In today’s workplaces, especially those in high-risk industries like construction, manufacturing, and logistics, technology has become more than just a tool for efficiency; it’s becoming a lifeline for health and safety.

Wearable technologies, such as fatigue-detection headbands, GPS-enabled lone worker devices, and even smart boots that monitor posture and impact, are enabling safety teams to gather data in real time. This level of visibility wasn’t possible a decade ago. Now, supervisors can be alerted the moment a worker enters a restricted zone, exceeds fatigue thresholds, or is exposed to dangerous environmental conditions like toxic gases or excessive heat.

Meanwhile, AI and machine learning are transforming the way incident data is reviewed and understood. Algorithms can identify patterns and trends across thousands of reports, highlighting, for example, that near misses often occur at a certain time of day or in a specific workgroup. These insights help organisations implement targeted interventions, rather than broad-brush solutions.

More importantly, these tools support a move from lagging indicators (like injury counts) to leading indicators, those early signs that risks are increasing. By focusing on what might happen rather than just what already has, businesses are empowered to prevent incidents instead of simply reacting to them.

This shift from hindsight to foresight is what defines modern safety management.

Building a Culture of Safety 🏗️

But even the best tools are useless without the right culture to support them.

Transitioning from outdated metrics like LTIFR to more meaningful, multi-dimensional safety performance indicators isn't just about software or dashboards, it’s about mindset.

A genuine culture of safety is one where reporting hazards is encouraged, not punished. It’s where leaders ask, “What could go wrong?” as often as they ask, “What went wrong?” And it's where every worker feels their voice matters, regardless of role or rank.

This cultural maturity doesn’t happen overnight. It starts at the top, with leaders who walk the talk, invest in training, and make time for toolbox talks and walk-arounds. But it’s reinforced at every level through psychological safety: the freedom for workers to speak up without fear of blame or ridicule.

Introducing new metrics often exposes gaps in culture. For example, if leading indicators show a low rate of near-miss reporting, it could signal fear, apathy, or lack of understanding, not necessarily an incident-free site.

That’s why culture and metrics must evolve together.

Ultimately, culture is the soil in which all safety initiatives grow. Without it, the most sophisticated systems will struggle to take root.

Moving from Measurement to Meaning

Retiring the LTIFR calculator isn’t just a technical change, it’s a cultural one.

It reflects a growing recognition that metrics alone don’t make workplaces safer; people, systems, and leadership do. For too long, we’ve relied on a single number to represent something far more complex: the wellbeing of real people doing real work in dynamic, and often dangerous, environments.

As safety professionals, business owners, and leaders, this shift gives us permission, and responsibility, to rethink our approach.

Instead of chasing numbers that make us look good on paper, we can start asking better questions:

• What is this metric really telling us?

• What risks are hiding in plain sight?

• Are we creating space for honest conversations about safety?

Embracing a broader, more holistic view of performance helps us move beyond fear-based compliance and toward genuine improvement. It allows us to balance data with dialogue, and systems with humanity.

Because at the end of the day, safety isn’t a spreadsheet. It’s a promise we make to ourselves, our teams, and our communities, to send people home safe, healthy, and whole.

The tools are evolving.

The insights are deepening.

Now, the opportunity is ours: to lead the next era of safety with clarity, courage, and care.