“We haven’t had an accident, so our safety program must be working.”
My first question would be simple: How do you know?
What information tells you that your safety efforts are responsible for that result? Are employees identifying hazards before someone gets hurt? Are concerns being addressed? Are the actions you take making the operation safer?
An organization can go a long time without a serious accident while risks remain unnoticed. Injuries, close calls, and other incidents may also go unreported.
An absence of accidents is great but it isn’t the sole metric we should use to establish a successful safety program. By itself, it tells you very little about how well your safety program is working.
To understand that, you need to look at what employees tell you, how the organization responds, and whether anything improves.
Be careful what you ask your report count to tell you
I have heard leaders say they need to lower their safety report count.
My challenge is usually to ask whether they should be encouraging more reporting.
If employees see hazards, encounter close calls, or notice changes that introduce risk, you want to hear about those things. Setting an expectation that the number of reports should decline can make employees question whether leadership actually wants that information.
A lower count might mean fewer problems. It might also mean people have stopped telling you about them.
Likewise, an increase in reports might reflect growing trust, more hazards, increased activity, or a combination of those factors. You have to examine what is being reported and what is happening in the operation.
There is no universal number of reports that proves a program is healthy. Two reports a year from an organization with 50 employees could mean very different things depending on the work, the exposure to hazards, and the ways employees raise concerns.
The report count is where the conversation should start. It shouldn’t be where the conversation ends.
Are you only getting mandatory reports?
One sign I look for is the range of concerns employees bring forward.
Are reports limited to injuries or events that clearly require documentation? Or do employees also raise concerns before something happens?
An employee might notice that a newly installed piece of machinery has something protruding into a walkway. Nobody has been injured, but the employee recognizes that someone could walk into it.
Another might question a change in how work is performed because the previous approach included a safeguard that has disappeared.
Those observations give the organization an opportunity to act early. They also suggest employees understand that safety reporting includes identifying potential problems.
I become more concerned when employees only report after being directed to, hesitate to discuss mistakes, or carefully avoid anything that might make them look responsible.
Those behaviors warrant a closer look. Employees may fear blame, doubt that anything will change, or simply misunderstand what they should report.
Having a reporting system available does not tell you whether people feel comfortable using it.
A useful report can arrive before an incident exists
While serving as a director of safety, I received calls from employees who had noticed something and wanted to talk it through.
One involved a security concern.
The organization was preparing to provide access badges to people who were not employees. An employee called because they were concerned about what that access would allow, particularly after hours, and whether appropriate guidelines were in place.
There had been no security incident. No specific threat had been identified. The employee saw a potential gap and raised it.
That conversation allowed us to discuss the concern and establish guidelines before the badges were delivered.
We cannot claim that an incident would otherwise have occurred. What we can say is that an employee identified a concern early enough for the organization to address it before access was provided.
That is a practical example of a safety and security system doing useful work.
It also shows why leaders should pay attention to conversations as well as submitted forms. A phone call can be an important entry point. The organization still needs to capture the concern and follow it through so it does not disappear when the conversation ends.
An investigation needs to lead somewhere
Receiving reports is only part of the picture.
An organization may review a report, speak with the people involved, and document that an investigation occurred. Those are useful steps. But what did the organization learn, and what changed?
If the investigation stops at “we talked to the employees,” the conditions that allowed the problem may still exist.
You need to understand why it happened. Was training incomplete? Were responsibilities unclear? Had operating conditions changed? Was an important safeguard missing?
There may be several contributing factors. Calling something “employee error” or identifying a training gap should prompt further questions about how that situation developed.
Once those factors are understood, someone needs responsibility for the action, a timeframe for completing it, and a way to check whether it worked.
A revised instruction may have been published without employees understanding it. Training may have been completed while the same practical obstacle remains. A new control may create an unexpected difficulty elsewhere.
Closing a report records an administrative decision. Evidence that the corrective action works gives you a stronger basis for saying the program is improving safety.
Three places I would start in a small organization
A small organization can begin evaluating its program without building an elaborate measurement system.
I would start with three things.
1. Ask specific questions in a safety survey
A general question such as “How would you rate our safety program?” provides limited direction.
Ask employees to rate specific statements:
- I know how to raise a safety concern.
- I feel comfortable reporting a mistake or close call.
- My supervisor takes safety concerns seriously.
- I receive feedback when I raise an issue.
- I have seen the organization act on employee concerns.
Give employees room to explain their answers. Take care with confidentiality, particularly in a small team where comments may make someone identifiable.
The responses can help reveal where employees’ experience differs from leadership’s expectations.
2. Review the reports and what happened afterward
Look at the number of reports in the context of the work being performed, then examine their content.
Are employees reporting potential hazards as well as actual events? Are concerns coming from different parts of the organization? Do the same issues keep appearing?
Follow a few reports from submission through investigation, action, and verification.
That review helps you see whether the reporting system is producing useful changes.
3. Talk with employees
Ask employees how they would raise a concern and what they expect would happen afterward.
Can they describe the system in their own words? Can they give an example of an issue that was addressed? Do they seem comfortable discussing something that went wrong?
As an outside reviewer, I pay attention to both the answers and the hesitation around them. Comfortable conversations are encouraging, but they should be considered alongside survey results, reports, and evidence of follow-through.
Together, those sources provide a more useful picture than any single score.
Build confidence from evidence
A safety program earns confidence through everyday evidence: employees notice concerns, raise them, receive a meaningful response, and see the organization take action.
Leaders then check whether those actions reduced the risk and whether further improvement is needed.
The next time someone says, “Our safety program is working,” ask them to show you what supports that conclusion.
The strongest answer will explain what the organization has learned, what it has changed, and how it knows those changes are helping.