When Safety Metrics Become the Work

Over-relying on backward-looking compliance metrics like TRIR consumes critical bandwidth without addressing the root causes that drive serious workplace harm.

• By Jonathan English
• Jul 29, 2026

Safety professionals are very good at measuring outcomes. Learning about the circumstances that can lead to serious harm and addressing them before an incident occurs, however, is much more challenging. And inappropriate reliance on traditional safety metrics only exacerbates the issue.

Compliance metrics like TRIR are essential. They’re useful for benchmarking performance and communicating to executives and boards. But TRIR was designed to standardize reporting for regulatory compliance—it was never meant to identify how serious harm develops.

According to the 2026 Risk Recalibrated Report from What Works Institute and Evotix, more than three-fourths of EHS leaders say their current safety metrics only partially reflect, or don't reflect at all, the factors that actually drive serious harm.

This idea surfaced again during the executive discussions we held at this year’s ASSP Conference to begin shaping the research agenda for the 2027 study. One theme emerged quickly: when serious harm is at stake, EHS leaders recognize the unintended consequences of relying on compliance metrics.

Managing the Metric

While most say current safety metrics aren’t helpful where help is needed most—reducing serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs)—teams continue to go to great lengths to report them to executives and boards. While reporting these numbers is never a bad idea, it doesn’t offer a complete picture. And too much energy is inevitably spent managing the measurement.

Instead of examining how the incident occurred, the focus becomes how to classify the incident. When attention centers on recordable rates, a disproportionate number of cycles are spent on counting and classifying falls from heights, for example, rather than understanding what can be addressed, such as how the worker slipped or why they weren’t wearing a safety harness.

This is an unintended consequence of relying on compliance metrics for something they were never designed to do.

SIF Frameworks Drift

To address this consequence, a growing number of organizations have adopted SIF frameworks. Unlike TRIR, SIF frameworks were created to help organizations learn why high-consequence events happen, examining the conditions, exposures and failed controls that create the potential for serious harm. But simply adopting a framework won’t solve the problem, and many report that a similar ‘manage the metric’ dynamic happens here, too.

Rather than learning why that safety harness wasn’t worn and addressing the circumstance to reduce the likelihood of a serious fall, the familiar process for safety teams is to zero in on what constitutes a potential serious injury or fatality (PSIF). Long debates on recordability can turn this learning metric into a compliance metric. When incentives are in place, the likelihood of this shift only increases.

Instead of a tool for understanding precursors, the framework can easily become yet another scorecard, leaving teams with more to report on rather than something to learn from.

Increasingly, EHS leaders are thinking of TRIR as a measure of what happened and the SIF framework as a tool to understand what could happen next. Confusing the two or treating them both as scorecards isn’t helpful—and it won’t improve your outcomes.

Re-Prioritize Learning

The good news is that safety teams are aware of these challenges, and they are actively working to find solutions. During our research-shaping session last month, we heard several compelling ways teams are tackling the tendency to confuse compliance tracking with learning opportunities.

We will share these ideas in the 2027 Risk Recalibrated report, due out in October, but in the meantime, here are a few key points:

Keep compliance metrics in their proper place. Requirements may evolve, but regulations aren’t going away. Various stakeholders will always find value in incident counts and classifications, including your board. Rather than abandoning TRIR or replacing it with something else, keep it for its intended purpose: standardized compliance reporting.

Protect learning from becoming another reporting exercise. Expand the conversation beyond PSIF classifications to consider recurring operational weaknesses, the strength of critical controls, work planning, contractor performance and other indicators that provide insight before serious harm occurs.

Integrate safety discussions into broader operational conversations. We heard about this during our session—because serious harm contributes to your organization’s operational excellence, safety learnings shouldn’t be a standalone report. Include safety topics with regular business reviews of operational and financial performance.

Compliance metrics are great at telling us how we did yesterday, but learning metrics will help us make better decisions tomorrow. Regardless of what metrics you use, your safety outcomes will improve if you first consider how every measurement can encourage learning and improve decision-making.