Safety Benchmarking: How to Benchmark Safety Events and Performance

Safety benchmarking compares your safety performance to past results and industry rates to find improvements. This guide shows how you can benchmark events like near misses and injuries, which metrics matter, and how you can find industry data.

Successful health and safety programs need consistent oversight and regular updates. And if you want to improve your performance, you have to reflect on where you’ve been in the past. Benchmark events like near misses, injuries, and more to make sure your approach is effective and long-lasting.

What is Safety Benchmarking?

Benchmarking is the process of comparing a company’s performance against industry best practices. You can benchmark competitors in your industry or your own internal performance, depending on the metrics or goals you want to achieve. Safety benchmarking applies that idea to safety results.

Apply this process to benchmark events in different areas like process efficiency, revenue, quality control, regulatory compliance, and more for a wide variety of continuous improvement project ideas. Overall, the purpose of benchmarking is to find and make adjustments that will help you reach your goals. By adopting best practices and implementing new approaches, you can transform your operation and set a new standard of performance.

Types of safety benchmarking

Type	What you compare	Example
Internal	Your results over time or across sites and teams	This quarter’s near-miss rate vs. last year’s
External	Your rates vs. industry data	Your TRIR vs. the BLS rate for your industry
Best practice	Your practices against leaders in any industry	Learning how another EHS team does pre-shift equipment checks

Benchmarking in Health and Safety

In health and safety, you can benchmark events like near misses and injuries to find opportunities for improvement. The best way I can describe benchmarking safety performance is that it’s a mash up of root cause analysis, gap analysis, and pattern analysis.

You’re essentially looking at:

• The root causes of good or poor safety performance
• The gaps in performance over time
• Patterns of behavior or circumstance that cause certain events

The goal of this process is to stay proactive in your safety approach, making sure to audit performance regularly and make quick adjustments to better protect workers. Through this process, you should be able to reduce the rate of safety incidents and operational failures.

Safety Metrics to Benchmark

Convert counts into rates to give yourself the fairest comparison. Most safety rates use 200,000 hours, and that equals 100 full-time employees working a year.

Metric	How to calculate it	Type
TRIR	Recordable cases × 200,000 ÷ hours worked. Check our guide to calculate TRIR	Lagging
DART rate	Days away, restricted or transferred cases × 200,000 ÷ hours worked	Lagging
Lost-time injury rate	Lost-time cases × 200,000 ÷ hours worked	Lagging
Near-miss reporting rate	Near misses reported × 200,000 ÷ hours worked	Leading
Corrective action closure rate	Actions closed by due date ÷ actions due	Leading
Inspection completion rate	Inspections completed ÷ inspections scheduled	Leading

Track both types since leading and lagging indicators tell you different things. Benchmarking only injuries ignores near misses that warn you first.

How to Benchmark Safety Performance in 6 Steps

1. Choose what you’ll benchmark. Pick the important events and rates. For example, near misses or recordable injuries.
2. Collect consistent data. Use the same definitions every time and convert counts to rates per 200,000 hours.
3. Compare against your history. Look at trends over time and check differences across sites, teams, and shifts.
4. Compare against external stats. Use industry rates and data that match your industry code.
5. Look for gaps and patterns. Use the questions in the next section to turn numbers into insight.
6. Track the results. Assign fixes owners and a due dates. Track what moves. See action tracking software.

How to Benchmark Safety Events

In my opinion, the best way to benchmark EHS performance is to look at internal data. And that’s because the intricacies of safety don’t apply to companies, even within the same industry, evenly.

Take OSHA’s process safety management (PSM) regulation as an example. Only companies who use highly hazardous chemicals must maintain PSM compliance. So, even though chemical manufacturers might have similar processes, some may have additional regulatory requirements to meet. There’s not a secret formula that fits all sites, but we’ll give six steps with the questions I use to get data insights.

Here are the questions I like to answer when I’m trying to reduce incident rates or eliminate hazards that cause near misses:

• What are the best practices for reducing the likelihood of this safety event?
• What are the industry recommendations for protecting workers from these types of events?
• How does our site’s current performance compare to the industry standard or past performance data?
• In the past, which corrective actions that we tried reduced the rate of this event?
• In the past, which corrective actions that we tried increased or had no effect on the rate of this event?
• Are there large performance fluctuations and if so, are there any patterns surrounding those events (peak output season, change in leadership, etc.)?

Just like it’s important to quantify or qualify your site’s performance, it’s equally important to determine the best practices you can use. I do this by talking to other EHS professionals in my industry and trying to learn from what they’re doing. Even if you can’t fully replicate someone else’s approach, when you benchmark events, there’s so much you can take inspiration from to improve.

Where to Find Safety Benchmark Data

Source	What it offers	Watch out for
BLS Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses	Injury and illness rates by industry code.	National averages; match your industry (NAICS) code
OSHA Injury Tracking Application (ITA)	Establishment-level injury and illness summaries from covered employers (2016 through 2025 so far) and case details (2023 through 2025)	Covers only employers required to submit
National Safety Council Injury Facts	National statistics on injuries and deaths by cause and industry	Use for context
Trade associations and peer groups	Industry-specific rates and practices	Definitions vary between groups
Insurance carrier loss runs	Your claims history, sometimes compared with similar insureds	Reflects claims, not every event

How to use outside benchmarks without being misled:

• Match your industry code the same rate formula before striking a comparison
• Look at small site data differently. One injury ticks up the rate sharply.
• Use benchmarks for context, but don’t rely on them as tell-all targets. A low rate can mean under-reporting. See our behavior-based safety program interview for the problem with a “days without injury” notice

How to Track Action Effectiveness

When you start implementing the best practices you find during your benchmarking exercise, don’t forget to track their effectiveness. You can do this manually or with action tracking software. Basically, you just want to have a system for following up on the different solutions and practices you implement.

There’s a reason why we call it “continuous improvement.” Oftentimes, you have to try several iterations of a solution before you can nail down the best option. If you benchmark events, you’re already taking a proactive approach. But if you truly want to transform performance, make sure you’re just as proactive about implementing new strategies as you are about finding them in the first place.

FAQ

What is safety benchmarking?

Safety benchmarking is the process of comparing your safety performance against your own past results, industry rates, or best practices to find where to improve. Companies benchmark injury rates, near misses, and corrective action results, then use the gaps and patterns they find to make changes and track whether those changes worked.

Why benchmark safety performance?

Benchmarking shows whether your results are improving, how you compare with similar employers, and which fixes work. It turns raw counts into rates you can compare fairly, highlights patterns such as seasonal spikes, and helps you set realistic targets. It also helps you justify safety investments with data instead of opinion.

What are the best metrics for safety benchmarking?

Common lagging metrics are TRIR, DART rate and lost-time injury rate. Useful leading metrics include the near-miss reporting rate, corrective action closure rate and inspection completion rate. Use both: lagging rates let you compare with industry data, while leading metrics show problems before someone gets hurt.

How do you benchmark TRIR against your industry?

Calculate your TRIR as recordable cases times 200,000 divided by hours worked, then compare it with the Bureau of Labor Statistics rate for your industry code. The BLS reported 2.3 cases per 100 full-time equivalent workers for private industry in 2024. Compare like for like, and watch for small-sample swings. [confirm]

What is a good TRIR?

There is no single good TRIR, because it depends on your industry, size and the year. A rate below your industry’s BLS average is a reasonable starting goal. A falling trend matters more than one number, and an unusually low rate can signal under-reporting rather than strong safety performance.

What is the difference between internal and external benchmarking?

Internal benchmarking compares your own results over time or across sites, shifts and teams. External benchmarking compares your results with industry rates or peer data. Internal data is usually the most relevant because every site’s hazards differ, while external data adds context. Most strong programs use both.