How AI can improve your safety KPIs

AI improves safety KPIs by enabling proactive monitoring of at-risk behaviors instead of reactive accident counting. Computer vision analyzes CCTV continuously to track PPE compliance, near misses, and procedural deviations, providing real-time insights that prevent incidents.

Key takeaways:

• Computer vision (CV) enables continuous safety monitoring across all shifts, replacing periodic manual audits with 24/7 data collection that identifies compliance trends and procedural deviations.
• Review four specific proactive KPIs in this article: automated audits, objective near-miss tracking, safe behavior measurement, and training effectiveness validation.
• Protex Intelligence turns video and safety data into reports and weekly focus lists, so teams can act sooner.
• Near-miss detection becomes consistent and unbiased, capturing pedestrian-vehicle interactions and other incidents that workers often fail to report.
• Training effectiveness can be measured by monitoring how workers apply learned safety practices on the job, not just course completion rates.
• Visual evidence from AI accelerates root cause analysis, helping teams implement corrective actions faster and prevent recurring incidents.

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What Makes Safety KPIs Useful?

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are measurable values used to monitor progress on specific business objectives and drive operational excellence.

Teams often express KPIs against headcount, for example, as the number of safety events per 100,000 people, or against working hours, for example, per one million hours worked. This allows safety KPIs in manufacturing and other industries to be compared across various organizations, different departments within the same organization, and over time.

Many teams start with reported accidents and injuries. These are reactive or lagging measures. They tell what happened after the fact. They are the most common KPIs because, with conventional approaches, it's the easiest to measure.

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How to Track Leading Safety Indicators with AI Monitoring 

Artificial intelligence, particularly computer vision monitoring of CCTV, enables predictive analytics that make it practical to track leading KPIs that point to risk early.

Here are four KPIs in safety that will help you move from reactive to proactive monitoring of occupational safety and health (OSH).

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1. Automating Daily Inspection Processes 

Audit and inspection scores are common safety metrics, and they are often required for ISO 45001 certification and regulatory standards. Because audits are labor-intensive, organizations tend to use them infrequently, perhaps once or twice a year.

Inspections might be required more often, but they can turn into a paperwork exercise. CV can monitor some items that audits and inspections would look at, with higher consistency, in real-time, every day of the year.

For example, a CV can be configured to detect obstacles in walkways or doors left open. During annual audits, safety data analysis from CV can be used to validate what the audit process missed and where risk is clustering.

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2. Improving Near-Miss Reporting Consistency 

Counting near misses is one of the most popular forms of safety metrics. Near-miss schemes rely on people to identify and then report events that could have resulted in an accident or injury but didn't.

For example, if a pedestrian walks in front of a forklift truck (FLT), causing the driver to brake sharply and drop a load. That incident might be reported. How many near misses go unreported when no damage occurs? Most people won't repeatedly report the same close call.

Computer vision can be consistent and objective when reporting near misses and supporting hazard identification with the help of machine learning algorithms. This technology enhances the accuracy of KPIs and improves workplace safety.

Organizations can use this information for root cause analysis, to develop targeted safety training programs, improve signage, or modify routes to minimize risks, which enhances their safety ROI.

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3. Monitor Behavior-Based Safety Indicators

Counting near misses, like the sharply braking FLT in the example above, gets you closer to prevention than just counting accidents, but the near miss can still damage productivity.

Well-written safe operating procedures outline the steps needed to achieve a task safely. Identifying critical points in these steps gives you early indicators of safety performance.

For example, a safety procedure specifies tools that should be used and what personal protective equipment (PPE) should be worn within designated work areas.

Computer vision can report how often the correct PPE is worn in the right location, helping teams improve PPE compliance.

QR codes linked to a job management system could also report the tools being used. This data can provide a leading KPI that shows how often teams deviate from the procedure.

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4. Measuring Safety Training Retention 

Some organizations track the number of employees receiving safety training as a KPI. While training is essential for OHS, attending a training course doesn't guarantee that someone will apply what they have learned on the job.

A CV could support a training KPI. For example, a safety manager might observe that some workers over-reach instead of moving within defined movement ranges. CV can be used to count how often workers over-reach.

Although training is provided, the issue persists. After the training, the over-reaching reduces on the day shift but not on the night shift.

Discussion with the workers reveals that the day supervisor supports the new practices, while the night supervisor prioritizes speed over safety. The CV data gives you what you need to adjust coaching and supervision so the change sticks.

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Methods to Maintain KPI Relevance 

People often say, "what gets measured gets done," but it is also true that poorly set KPIs have unintended consequences.

This includes pointless activities or under-reporting of incidents to hit a target without making the workplace safer.

The good news is that computer vision enables the collection of meaningful and accurate KPIs that will support a proactive approach to OHS, OSHA compliance, and behavioral safety.

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Advancing EHS Strategies with Protex AI 

Protex AI supports EHS teams with actionable insights from safety data, enhancing any EHS management system and helping improve health and safety KPIs across sites.

It also helps record, tag, and store safety events for review, giving teams visual evidence of how safety protocols play out on the floor.

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How Protex AI Helps Teams Act on Leading Indicators

Protex Intelligence can generate tailored reports for different stakeholders and export weekly focus lists of hotspots, behaviors, and suggested actions, so supervisors can prioritize intervention. Video processing happens on-site, and only anonymized clips and metadata are uploaded for analysis.

Want to see what Protex AI would flag in your facility? Request a demo to walk through weekly focus lists and tailored reports based on your EHS priorities.

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