Leading OHS indicators

Occupational health and safety (OHS) leading indicators are performance measures that help predict injuries and illnesses, allowing workplaces and system partners to gauge an organization’s health and safety climate, culture and performance before injuries and illnesses occur. Their opposite is lagging indicators such as injury and claims rates, which measure performance based on injuries and illnesses that have already occurred. IWH research focuses on finding and validating the measures that will accurately gauge the likelihood of an organization’s future OHS performance, as well as the best way to use leading indicators to prevent future work-related injuries, illnesses and deaths.

Featured

Overhead view of two people in safety helmets walking up the stairs in a plant
At Work article

IWH tool comes out ahead in Australian study of OHS leading indicator tools

In an Australian study of five health and safety leading indicator tools around the world, a measure developed by IWH has come out ahead for its ability to pick up workers’ risk of reporting a physical injury or a near miss at work.
Published: February 7, 2023
Overhead image of a busy, open-concept office
At Work article

IWH eight-item questionnaire may predict future claims rates

The IWH-OPM, developed as part of the Institute’s leading indicators research, found to predict future claims rates in a sample of Ontario firms
Published: August 2014
A row of orange safety cones
At Work article

Ontario firm uses OLIP to track health and safety in suppliers

Real estate services company shares story of how it puts leading indicators to use
Published: August 2014
Boats in icy New Brunswick harbour
Impact case study

WorkSafeNB adopts IWH’s tool to benchmark health and safety

Institute expertise tapped to evaluate agency's safety perception tool--and to provide a better alternative.
Published: June 2014
At Work article
At Work article

Leading indicators project tests five tools for ability to predict injury claims

With help from 1,800 Ontario employers, IWH team probes workplace factors for link to future claims
Published: November 2013
A helmeted worker sits on bench with laptop
Issue Briefing

Developing leading indicators of work injury and illness

Leading indicators have the potential to help identify factors affecting the risk of injury, allowing workplaces to address these factors before injuries occur. This Issue Briefing looks at efforts to date to identify OHS leading indicators and the challenges involved.
Published: October 2013
At Work article
At Work article

New Brunswick’s WorkSafeNB adopts IWH’s safety culture yardstick

Institute of Work & Health’s Organizational Performance Metric chosen after study shows firms’ scores on eight-item questionnaire correlate with claims rates
Published: July 2013
Project report
Project report

Assessment of the utility of WorkSafeNB's Internal Responsibility System Questionnaire and IWH's Organizational Performance Metric: public report

In 2010, WorkSafeNB asked the Institute for Work and Health (IWH) to assess its Internal Responsibility System Questionnaire (IRSQ), a survey tool it had developed to measure safety culture within an organization. As part of its assessment, IWH compared the IRSQ with another previously validated tool designed to measure leading indicators, called the IWH Organizational Performance Metric (IWH-OPM). This document reports on the assessment of these two tools.
Published: July 2013
At Work article
At Work article

Leading indicators may pinpoint positive differences in OHS practices

The Institute for Work & Health is currently conducting a number of studies that may provide important insights on “leading indicators.” The results from these studies will support efforts to improve the way Ontario firms manage their occupational health and safety programs.
Published: February 2011
Project report
Project report

Benchmarking organizational leading indicators for the prevention and management of injuries and illnesses: final report

Can a simple tool be developed that will predict a firm’s workplace injury experience based on an assessment of its health and safety policies and practices? This was the question that a team of partners within Ontario's occupational health and safety (OHS) system set out to answer, and it looks like the answer is “yes.” This report describes the team's work developing these potential OHS leading indicators.
Published: January 2011
IWH Speaker Series
IWH Speaker Series

Where should we be going, and how should we get there?

Leading indicators of occupational health and safety system performance help leaders and decision-makers make evidence informed decisions about targeting strategies, policy needs, organizational changes needed and system equity issues. They create a common ground for discussion and debate about what key occupational health and safety system actors are doing, how well they are doing it and where policy influences practice. A key group of leading indicators are about organizational performance. Yet there remains little consensus on what are the best leading indicators of organizational performance are reflecting little consensus in the scientific community. In Ontario, the Ministry of Labour (MOL), Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) and the Health and Safety Associations (HSAs) collaborated to develop a leading indicator. The work was lead by the Health and Safety Associations and supported by the Institute for Work & Health. The project resulted in a short two-page questionnaire to be administered to management representatives of 1000 Ontario employers. Over 800 employers participated and IWH linked the employer data to WSIB claims data. Results will be presented to show the reliability and validity of the eight questions developed as a leading indicator of organizational performance. Next steps for the use of the metric will be discussed. The project raised many questions and has resulted in a larger survey of 5000 Ontario employers to build on this work and to determine the feasibility of developing a benchmarking knowledge base for the Ontario Prevention System.
Published: September 2010