Rethinking Safety Data: The Untapped Potential of Risk Assessments
THE AUTHOR: Peter Thomas – INTUETY
In the health and safety world, we often focus on two main data types, lagging and leading indicators. Both are valuable yet flawed.
– Lagging indicators (like accident or incident reports) offer insight into what went wrong in the past. But as safety systems improve, ironically, there’s often less data to analyse—fewer accidents mean fewer insights.
– Leading indicators (like safety observations or near-misses) can help us look ahead, identifying potential risks before they happen. However, collecting this data consistently and reliably is a huge challenge, making it difficult to justify investments based on incomplete or spotty information.
The result? Organisations often can’t draw meaningful conclusions about safety performance or make confident, data-driven decisions. But what if there’s another source of data that we’ve overlooked? Enter Risk Assessments — a rich, largely untapped mine of actionable safety data.
Risk Assessments: From Static Documents to Dynamic Data Sources
Risk assessments are often seen as bureaucratic paperwork, stored away to meet compliance requirements. But what if we looked at them differently? These documents are loaded with valuable information:
- Every hazard within the organisation, is laid out clearly.
- Every control measure matched directly to the hazards they mitigate.
- Links to safety budgets, since control measures often represent safety investments.
By analysing this data, we can uncover trends, inefficiencies, and opportunities:
- Cost Insights: Risk assessments allow us to break down safety spending. How much are we investing in each hazard? Are some hazards being over- or under-mitigated compared to their actual risks?
- Benchmarking: By aggregating and analysing hazard data, we can start to benchmark ourselves against others in our industry. Are we addressing the same risks? Are we spending too much or too little relative to others?
How Intuety Unlocks the Power of Risk Assessments
At Intuety, we’re changing the way organisations think about their health and safety data. Our AI-driven risk assessment platform extracts and analyses the data trapped in risk assessments, transforming static documents into actionable insights. By linking control measures to costs, Intuety helps organisations see exactly where their safety budget is going—and whether it’s being used effectively.
Risk Assessments are more than compliance tools; they’re a goldmine of data waiting to be explored. And with Intuety, unlocking that data is easier than ever.
Ready to Discover the Potential of Your Risk Assessments?
Contact Intuety today to learn how we can help you transform your risk assessments into dynamic tools for smarter safety decisions.
