Overview of Leading Indicators for Occupational Health and Safety in Mining

Summary

• Prevention of negative OHS outcomes is a key moral imperative and business value driver. Avoiding immediate and longer-term damage to people, the environment and property is sound financial business practice that also reduces business interruptions. Ideally, a hazard should be prevented from manifesting by understanding and managing the circumstances preceding it. 
• Indicators that can measure these circumstances – that can give advance warning” about what might be going wrong are called leading indicators. 
• Using leading indicators, mining companies can identify whether proactive risk-lowering decisions and actions are being effective, and why a desired result has or has not been achieved.
• Terminology relating to leading indicator development is highly inconsistent. Terminology is suggested in this document that is thought to be most descriptive of the intended message
• The use and implementation of leading indicators is placed within the context of OHS management systems but does not describe fully the development of such systems.
• Available guidance for other industries is not repeated: an overview of approaches within the mining industry is provided and the reader is directed where necessary to other more detailed readily available information. 
• This overview represents a move away from relating all OHS issues to incidents, towards highlighting the broader value case for leading indicator use.
• This overview is neither prescriptive nor all encompassing: approaches should be tailored to suit the circumstances and culture of each unique company, country, site or department.