An extensive seven-year survey, Serious Injury & Fatality (SIF) Insights White Paper from ISN, incorporaed 2023 data into its analysis with a focus on ASTM E2920-19's Level One Injury Recording criteria.
The research examined recordable incidents from 2017 to 2023 identifying 19,900 potential SIF cases.
The analysis reveals a 16% decrease in SIF cases from 2022 to 2023, the lowest total since 2017, suggesting a positive trend as industries focus on high-consequence event prevention and safety culture initiatives such as Human and Organizational Performance (HOP), an operational philosophy that shifts the focus from worker behavior to the processes designed to protect the worker.
Additional highlights from paper include:
Workplace Injury Trend Analysis:
Contact with objects or equipment remains the top incident category, accounting for 60% of injuries from 2017 to 2023. In 2023, 90% of amputations affected hands, fingers, or wrists, consistent with OSHA’s severe injury trends. These injuries are often linked to unguarded machinery and improper use of high-risk equipment.
Construction and Transportation Industries Face Heightened SIF Rates:
Contractors in the construction industry experienced over 1,200 SIF cases in 2023, with 43 fatalities. Additionally, more than 1,000 SIF cases were reported in the transportation industry in 2023, with a 30% SIF rate increase from 2021 to 2023.
Mid-Size Companies Show Disproportionate SIF Rates:
Smaller and mid-sized companies experience greater variability in safety performance, likely due to resource limitations, workforce turnover, and exposure to high-risk activities.
Mature safety organizations are looking deeper into their safety cultures and systems within their operations and implementing philosophies such as HOP to continue to reduce SIFs. By changing the cultural response to hazard assessments, near miss reporting, incident investigation, and other safety practices, organizations aim to create a collaborative learning environment to help drive SIF reduction.
“A strong safety culture is the foundation of an effective safety program and organizations need reliable insights to drive meaningful change,” said Marie Anderson, chief customer success officer and at ISN.