Leading indicator

A leading indicator is a proactive metric that predicts future safety performance — it changes before the lagging indicator it predicts. The standard examples are near-miss rate, inspection closure time, training-currency rate, observation-to-action conversion, and corrective-action overdue rate. A program that reports only lagging indicators is reacting to what already went wrong; a program that reports leading indicators is steering toward what is about to.

The discipline is in the definition. A leading indicator has to have a defensible causal link to the lagging outcome — near-miss rate predicts incident rate because the same hazards produce both, and corrective-action closure time predicts recurrence because an open action is an unremoved hazard. A metric without that link is just a number. The other discipline is that a leading indicator has to be movable by the program: a rate the program cannot influence is a weather report, not a control. For the contrast, see lagging indicator; for the rate a leading program tries to push down, see TRIR.