Balanced approach to serious injury and fatality prevention: Exploring empirical relationships between short and long-term measures of safety performance

Introduction: Safety is increasingly being defined not by the absence of harm, but by the presence of capacity to control critical hazards. However, widely used metrics like the rate of recordable incidents can obscure true exposure to conditions during work that lead to serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs), especially when these metrics are used in isolation. To address this gap, we examined whether two new short-term measures of SIFs, namely the quality of pre-job safety briefs (PJSB quality) and high-energy control assessments (HECA), are statistically related to conventional and alternative lagging indicators. Method: Field assessment data and injury records from 31 utility and construction organizations were analyzed to test these relationships. Results : The results indicate that: (1) a lower injury rate in the past is associated with stronger short-term safety performance in the future, as measured by more engaged pre-job safety briefs and reduced exposure to high-energy hazards; (2) PJSB quality is positively associated with the HECA score over short periods; and (3) a higher HECA score is associated with reduced SIF rates over extended periods. These results indicate that monitoring key safety activities and indicators of energy control can serve as short-term measures of SIF exposure that predict future outcomes. Additionally, combining traditional and contemporary metrics offers a more holistic representation of SIF exposure, one that balances leading, monitoring, and lagging indicators. Conclusions and practical applications: Such information may help companies transition from reactive approaches to safety measurement to a balanced approach that considers input, system monitoring, and outputs.