Challenging traditional safety metrics

Safety expert Jodi Goodall urges Canadian health and safety professionals to rethink how they measure workplace safety, warning that traditional metrics may be giving organizations a false sense of security.

“We’ve been using recordable injury rates as our primary measure of safety since the 1970s,” Goodall says, addressing delegates at the 2025 Energy Safety Conference in Banff. “But they don’t tell us what we think they do — and they’re not helping us prevent fatalities.”

In a presentation that blends storytelling, data analysis, and personal experience, Goodall dismantles the long-held belief that lower injury rates equate to safer workplaces. She opens with the story of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, where executives touring an offshore rig focused on minor safety infractions while critical warning signs of a well blowout went unheeded.

“They thought they were leading safety,” Goodall says. “To them, a lower injury rate meant a safer rig — but that belief was fatal. Eleven workers died, and the rig burned for two days.”

Injury rates don’t predict fatalities

Goodall draws on multiple international studies to support her case. She cites 2023 mining industry data from the International Council of Mining and Metals (ICMM), showing that companies with low Total Recordable Injury Frequency (TRIF) rates still experience fatalities, while some of the worst performers by TRIF have none.

“There is no statistical correlation between recordable injuries and fatalities,” she says, referencing a 2020 study by the Construction Safety Research Alliance and the University of Colorado. “In fact, the causes are often completely different.”

Goodall explains that 80% of recordable injuries stem from low-risk incidents — such as musculoskeletal strains or minor slips and trips — that have little to no potential to escalate into serious injuries or deaths.

“We manage these events differently. They require different controls. If we use one metric to represent both, we miss the point entirely,” she adds.

Incentives undermine reporting and risk visibility

The presentation also highlights how incentive structures tied to injury metrics may suppress open reporting of incidents, especially near misses and close calls that could be learning opportunities.

“Workers ask themselves, ‘Do I really want to be the one to break our clean streak?’” Goodall says. “That internal tension is called cognitive dissonance — and it kills psychological safety.”

She recounts her own experience as a safety leader early in her career, describing how she became skilled at reducing TRIF for performance bonuses.

“They even called me the ‘Queen of the TRIF’,” she admits. But in 2015 a worker named Josh Martin died in a mining accident in Australia, and it changed Goodall’s perspective on safety incidents. “I realized none of that was helping us prevent fatalities. It was distracting us from what really mattered.”

A new approach: Focus on fatal risks and critical controls

Goodall urges health and safety professionals to adopt a new suite of performance metrics — ones that focus on fatality risk, critical controls, and leading indicators that anticipate failure.

She recommends organizations begin by clearly defining their fatal risks and identifying the critical controls that mitigate those risks. From there, safety teams can develop metrics that assess whether those controls are consistently in place and effective.

“Don’t reward TRIF. Reward the behaviors that help you manage fatal risks,” she advises. “Start measuring how often you verify critical controls, how effective they are, and how quickly you respond when they fail.”

Goodall also points to tools like Serious Injury and Fatality Potential (SIFP) and Serious Injury and Fatality Actuals (SIFA) as more meaningful indicators than broad-brush TRIF statistics.

Advice for health and safety leaders

To support the transition, Goodall offers the following guidance for professionals:

• Educate executives: Use internal data and industry examples to explain why injury rates don’t predict fatalities.
• Separate metrics: Track minor injuries for operational insight, but keep fatal risk metrics distinct.
• Rethink incentives: Refrain from tying financial bonuses to low TRIF performance.
• Enhance visibility: Promote reporting of close calls and critical control failures.
• Tell better stories: Share real examples of how fatalities happen and how critical controls make the difference.

Goodall concludes with a call for courage and clarity in reshaping the safety conversation: “We must stop labeling recordable injuries as true safety performance. We need to tell stories that reflect the health of our controls — not just a green or red box on a dashboard.”