Safety Management Made Simple

What is Safety Management?

Safety management is a structured way to find, assess, and control risks to keep the workplace safe and healthy. It involves using principles, processes, and systems to prevent accidents and injuries. These efforts are part of the company’s Safety Management System (SMS). Regular evaluation and monitoring help improve safety over time, using both leading (proactive) and lagging (reactive) indicators to track and enhance performance.

Safety management approaches typically involve a mix of proactive and reactive monitoring. In line with Safety-11 approaches, is important to shift the focus from simply managing risks to understanding and optimizing the conditions under which work is successful.

What is a Safety Management System?

A Safety Management System (SMS) is a collection of structured, company-wide processes that provide effective risk-based decision-making for daily business functions. The objective of an SMS is to provide a structured management approach to control safety risks in operations. The SMS helps organisations maintain safe operations and offer products or services at the highest level of safety. Typically, an SMS has four components as shown in the table below.

#	SMS Component	Description
1	Policy & Objectives	Employers should make safety an integral part of company values, demonstrating their commitment daily. Specifically, top management needs to set safety goals as policy while being visible and personally involved in meeting them. Safety accountability and responsibilities should be clearly defined, such as the role of the leadership team to manage safety in the same way that they oversee other areas of the business and the duty of technical managers to ensure the effectiveness of safety risk controls.
2	Risk Assessment & Management	Risk assessment and management is the process of identifying, evaluating, and controlling workplace hazards to minimize risks to employees, assets, and operations.
3	Safety Assurance	Safety Assurance (SA) is the component of a safety management system that deals with the monitoring of risk controls during operations. After strategically placing control measures, their performance and effectiveness should be assessed as well. Common SA functions include internal audits, investigations, and employee reporting systems.
4	Safety Promotion	Safety Promotion is defined as the activities that support the SMS implementation in an organisation such, as safety training, knowledge-sharing, and communication. A key dimension of this is fostering a positive safety culture.

Measuring Safety Performance

Measuring safety and health performance involves tracking key indicators to assess how well an organization is managing risks and ensuring worker well-being. Typically, this involves a mix of both reactive and active monitoring, considering both leading and lagging indicators.

#	Type	Timeframe	Evaluation
1	Reactive monitoring	After things go wrong	The employer investigates injuries, cases of illness, bullying complaints, property damage and near misses - specifying in each case why safety performance was sub-standard, and what corrective actions need to be taken.
2	Active monitoring	Before things go wrong	The employer undertakes routine inspections and checks to see that standards are being maintained. Here the focus is on checking whether safety objectives and standards are being achieved, and if they are being effective.

Safety-I and Safety-II

Safety-I and Safety-II are complementary approaches to safety management.

The Safety-I approach focuses on preventing things going wrong. In this approach, safety is defined as the absence of failures, incidents, or accidents. Humans are viewed as a risk factor and/or a source of error. Accordingly, the focus is on improving safety by examining and learning from system failures. This includes learning from near misses, safety events and serious accidents. This approach is often referred to as the ‘traditional approach’.

The Safety-II approach focuses on ensuring that things go right. It focuses on making sure things go right, not just preventing things from going wrong. It defines safety as the ability to succeed in different situations. Human performance is seen as flexible and valuable - people often help prevent problems, so they’re an important part of a system’s strength. Safety-II also recognizes that complex systems can’t be fully managed by strict rules alone. It promotes flexibility, learning from all types of outcomes—everyday work, great performance, near-misses, accidents, and failures. By looking at the full picture, Safety-II aims to improve performance, build resilience, and support continuous learning and improvement.

Leading & Lagging Indicators

Typically, organisations use specific occupational health and safety indicators to measure workplace safety performance. These indicators are divided into leading and lagging indicators. While lagging indicators can alert you to a failure in an area of your safety and health program or to the existence of a hazard, leading indicators are important because they can tell you whether your safety and health activities are effective at preventing incidents. A good safety and health program uses leading indicators to drive change and lagging indicators to measure effectiveness. To ensure continuous safety improvement, organizations should compare performance against industry benchmarks and standards (for example, ISO 45001).

#	Type	What Address/Focus
1	Leading Indicators	These are proactive and preventive measures that can shed light on the effectiveness of safety and health activities and reveal potential problems in a safety and health program. These indicators focus on safety performance and risk management efforts rather than outcomes.
2	Lagging Indicators	These measure the occurrence and frequency of events that occurred in the past, such as the number or rate of injuries, illnesses, and fatalities. As such, these metrics reflect the results of safety performance but do not prevent future incidents.

EXAMPLE LEADING INDICATORS

The table below provides examples of different leading indicators grouped into topic areas.

Type	Description
ISO 45001 Certification	Company is certified for ISO 45001
Risk Assessment	% completion of risk assessments for all hazards Employee involvement in the specification of hazards and appropriate controls Number of updates to risk assessments Frequency of updates to risk assessments and company safety statement
Training & Education	% of employees received basic OSH induction training % of employees received training in task specific hazards and controls % of employees completed other mandatory OSH training relevant to context of their work % of managers who have completed occupational safety and health training % of managers who have evaluated OSH training needs for their teams.
Safety Audits & Inspections	Number of safety inspections conducted Frequency of ergonomic audits
Hazard Reporting	Number of hazards identified and addressed
Employee Participation	Number of workers involved in safety programs or Safety Committees Frequency of Health and Safety meetings Frequency of Safety Committee meetings
Near-Miss Reporting	Number of near misses reported that did not result in injury
PPE Compliance	% of employees consistently using protective equipment
Safety Culture	Organisation undertakes audits/surveys on safety attitudes and practices % of employees providing feedback on safety policies % of staff engaging in safety activities/programmes % of managers engaging in safety activities/programmes % of manager/leadership meetings where safety is an agenda item

EXAMPLE LAGGING INDICATORS

The table below provides examples of different lagging indicators grouped into topic areas.

Injury Rate	Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR)
Workplace Fatalities	Number of deaths due to workplace hazards
Days Away from Work	Number of lost workdays - all Number of lost workdays - due to injury
Workers’ Compensation Claims	Number of claims filed for work-related injuries
Cost of Incidents	Expenses related to medical treatment, legal fees, and lost productivity

What is ISO 45001?

Occupational Health & Safety Management System (OHSMS) / ISO 45001 is an international standard for occupational health and safety (OH&S) management systems, developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). It provides a framework for organizations to proactively improve workplace safety, reduce risks, and create healthier work environments. ISO 45001 shifts safety from a reactive to a proactive approach, ensuring organizations protect workers while improving efficiency and compliance.

The key requirements for ISO 45001 include:

Identify and control workplace risks.
Management and employees must collaborate on safety.
Ensure compliance with national safety regulations.
Set safety goals and track performance.
Implement measures to manage risks effectively.
Have plans for workplace emergencies.
Learn from safety incidents to improve policies.

Please Note