Over my career, the most profound advancement in safety management was the recognition and shift away from lagging indicators (i.e., injury rates) to leading indicators within our safety management system (SMS). But as this approach to safety metrics became more widespread, we have seen even leading indicators become a “number game” that gets manipulated as much as the old “OSHA Recordables” games. So what does one do? Get rid of all safety metrics because all of them can be manipulated? Try that concept with the other business metrics. Publish the next annual report with no business metrics claiming they can all be manipulated; thus, we just eliminated them. I wonder how that would go over with the shareholders and regulators. It is pure madness NOT to measure something simply because we fear that measurement can/will be manipulated. It is the role of management, senior management, to have a DATA VALIDATION system in place. Some may call this the Quality Control (QC) of our SMS.
