How to Identify Life-Altering Safety Risks Before an Incident Occurs
Most safety leaders are evaluated based on past events: recordables, lost time, claim counts, and "days since last injury."
However, the exposure to serious injury and fatality often doesn't manifest clearly in those numbers. You might have a "good month" on paper while high-energy work continues daily, with critical gaps in the essential controls.
The more pertinent question is:
Can you detect life-altering risks early enough to intervene?
This article presents a practical approach that uses established Serious Injury and Fatality (SIF) prevention concepts, leading indicators, and a sustainable operational rhythm. The method aligns with the (SIF) prevention concepts, leading indicators, and a sustainable operational rhythm. The method aligns with the National Safety Council’s SIF Prevention Model and OSHA guidelines on leading indicators.
Step 1: Start with the right definitions (SIF and pSIF)
A Serious Injury or Fatality (SIF) is the outcome we strive to prevent: an incident resulting in death or life-altering harm. The National Safety Council’s SIF Prevention Model helps organizations identify SIF hazards, implement safeguards, and verify their effectiveness over time using a continuous improvement approach.
A potential SIF (pSIF) is a high-potential exposure, near miss, or event that could have led to a SIF if conditions were slightly different or if a critical control failed. Campbell Institute research underscores the importance of focusing on precursors and safeguards related to serious outcomes, rather than just general safety activity counts.
Why this matters: if your system only tracks injuries post-occurrence, you miss early warning signals present in daily operations.
Step 2: Understand why traditional metrics miss life-altering risk
Lagging metrics remain important, but by design, they are retrospective measures. OSHA clearly explains: lagging indicators measure past events, while leading indicators help assess if prevention activities are effective.
SIF events are typically low frequency but high severity. This means averages can appear satisfactory until the moment they are not.
What you truly need is a method to assess exposure and control health, not just outcomes.
Step 3: Build a repeatable system to spot SIF risk early
Here’s a practical framework you can implement in nearly any setting.
3.1 Identify high-injury exposure
Begin by listing tasks where a single mistake can be catastrophic. Keep it concise. Aim for 8 to 12 exposures per site.
Common categories:
Working at height
Line of fire and struck by exposure
Vehicle and pedestrian interaction
Uncontrolled energy and LOTO gaps
Confined space or atmospheric hazards
Heavy equipment and suspended loads
Excavation and trenching
This becomes your SIF exposure inventory. It guides your training, verification, and reinforcement efforts.
3.2 Define the critical controls that must not fail
OSHA’s guidance on leading indicators is straightforward: they help employers take preventive actions before hazards become incidents, and a robust program uses leading indicators to drive change and lagging indicators to evaluate effectiveness.
For SIF prevention, strong leading indicators tend to be control-focused, such as:
Verification rate for critical controls (beyond just training completion)
Quality and frequency of pre-task planning for high-energy work
Near-miss and hazard reporting volume plus closure time
Corrective action aging for SIF-related findings
Supervisor observations linked to specific critical controls
Comprehension checks on the exact hazards faced by workers
Campbell Institute research reinforces that leading indicators are most valuable when they reflect precursors and safeguard strength associated with serious outcomes.
3.4 Close the loop fast
High-potential exposure is time-sensitive. When a control is weak, the response should be:
Reinforce the right behavior immediately
Correct the condition
Verify the fix is holding
Share the lesson learned across similar crews or sites
This aligns with the “act and continuously improve” intent within the NSC model.
Step 4: Watch for the three gaps that keep SIF risk invisible
4.1 Reporting is inconsistent
If incident and near-miss reporting varies by supervisor, site, or shift, your signals become unreliable. ModONE’s own survey results highlight how prevalent inconsistency is and why it undermines program effectiveness.
4.2 Training is completed but not understood
Completion does not equate to comprehension. In high-energy work, understanding is an integral part of control. Without checking comprehension, you're merely guessing.
4.3 Engagement breaks down on the frontline
Distributed teams, multiple shifts, and varying language preferences create predictable gaps. If communication is uneven, exposure gets missed.
How modONE helps teams operationalize SIF prevention
Most companies already know what to do. The challenge lies in maintaining consistency without increasing headcount or turning safety into additional administrative work.
modONE is a safety management platform that drives employee participation through every phase of your safety program. It’s powered by SafetyBot, an AI-enabled engagement engine built around behavioral science. Instead of relying on one-time training or static content libraries, modONE helps you establish repeatable habits. It uses targeted nudges, brief micro-learning sessions, and simple workflows to reach the right people at the right time, then verifies understanding and follow-through. The result is a program that is actively operational in the field across crews, shifts, and locations, not just a passive system of record.
modONE is designed to support day-to-day operations by assisting teams in:
Delivering targeted safety content and toolbox talks
Tracking participation and digital sign-offs
Adding comprehension checks and quick feedback loops
Structuring incident reporting and follow-up through digital workflows
Maintaining visibility into engagement and execution across locations and shifts
SafetyBot also reduces the weekly burden of content creation and scheduling, ensuring safety leaders aren’t starting from scratch every week. It helps keep your program consistent and risk-focused, even when resources are limited.
If you want a practical step-by-step plan you can implement immediately, this modONE post provides a weekly structure and key metrics to track as you build momentum.
Start a free trial
If you want to see what SIF focused leading indicators and frontline engagement look like in a system designed for fast adoption, start a free 30 day trial of modONE (no credit card required).
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About the author
John Turner is Chief Commercial and Marketing Officer at modONE. He leads go to market and customer growth, working closely with safety leaders, operations teams, and partners to bring practical, measurable safety programs to the field. His work focuses on helping organizations improve day-to-day execution across crews, locations, and shifts through consistent communication, clear expectations, and simple follow through that leaders can track and act on.
