NSC CEO Calls for Shift to New Metrics: “We’re Measuring Safety Wrong
At the opening of the 2025 NSC Safety Congress & Expo, Lorraine Martin urged a move away from traditional lagging indicators toward Serious Injury and Fatality.
- By David Kopf
- Sep 15, 2025
The National Safety Council opened its 2025 Safety Congress & Expo Monday morning with a direct challenge to the way safety performance is measured. In her keynote address, NSC President and CEO Lorraine Martin argued that the industry’s heavy reliance on Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) is masking risks and failing to save lives.
“For more than a decade, we’ve seen that TRIR has fallen while fatalities and serious incidents have remained stagnant — and in some cases have increased,” Martin told attendees at the Colorado Convention Center. “That tells us we’re measuring safety wrong.”
Martin used the Deepwater Horizon disaster as a striking example. On the day of the 2010 explosion that killed 11 workers, managers were on board celebrating seven years without a lost-time incident. “They measured what they were required to measure regarding safety, the common lagging metrics,” Martin said. “Yet the risk obviously was extremely high, and it led to disaster.”
Instead of focusing on backward-looking measures, Martin called on organizations to embrace Serious Injury and Fatality (SIF) prevention strategies — a “Moneyball moment” for safety. “You’re no longer measuring what’s already happened,” she said. “You’re measuring risk around what could happen and what could hurt or kill someone, and then you’re acting to prevent and control that risk before the incident occurs.”
She emphasized that workers and managers often already know where the greatest hazards lie — such as working at heights, slips, trips and falls, falling objects, or vehicle crashes. The challenge, Martin said, is not predicting the future but taking decisive action against well-known high-risk activities.
“Focus on what can kill you,” she urged. “Sounds simple, but really requires significant change.”
Martin acknowledged that moving beyond TRIR will not be easy, particularly for smaller organizations or those with entrenched reporting systems. But she insisted the shift is necessary. “Like all progress, this one needs our full support to bring to life,” she said. “It won’t be easy, but we can stop resisting the change, become part of it, and bring about it faster — because the one simple thing is we know it will save lives.”
The NSC is providing new resources to help safety professionals adopt SIF practices, including its recently launched Safety Map, a maturity assessment tool designed to guide organizations along the path to more predictive safety programs.
Closing her address, Martin urged attendees to embrace a new identity that reflects their mission. “Don’t think of yourself as a professional or a manager,” she said. “Your mission is to do whatever it takes to make people live safer. You’re a lifesaver, you’re an innovator, you’re a hero, and you’re a leader. So let’s shepherd in this new evolution of safety together, and let’s start now.”
About the Author
David Kopf is the publisher and executive editor of Occupational Health & Safety magazine.