In this series, the concept of and need for whistleblowers will be explored along with historical and present-day cases. In this part one, the concept of whistleblowers, OSHA’s language regarding them and types of whistleblower reports are explored. 

Lagging indicators are simply rates of injuries that have already happened. If we know how and why these incidents occurred, we can transfer this knowledge into our continual hazard analysis, improve our hazard controls, communicate them and begin to validate their use.

Unfortunately, many organizations have a false perception that merely employing someone in a safety capacity is a risk control, as in, “Your Honor, we did our due diligence in safety… see, we hired a Safety Person (points to the ‘Safety Person’).”

Safety professionals work diligently to engage both leaders and employees. But there is often a challenge: leaders wish their employees would just "be careful" without doing diligence to hazard identification, assessment and control. The result: workers claim leaders are only concerned with productivity and budgets.

High-reliability organizations create the safest and most effective operations and then constantly re-assess for any possibility of failure before an incident occurs, including near-miss events.