Safe Work Australia Retires LTIFR Calculator: A Turning Point in Safety Measurement
On May 19, 2025, Safe Work Australia made a significant announcement that signals a major shift in how Australian organisations should approach workplace safety measurement:
"New data reporting tools released in December on our data website, Our Data. Your Stories., have now replaced the Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) calculator... While the LTIFR calculator was useful for drawing conclusions about the impact of poor WHS on productivity, there were limitations when it was used in isolation to measure WHS performance."
This development marks a crucial turning point in workplace safety measurement. For decades, the Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate has been the dominant safety metric across Australian industries, serving as a seemingly objective way to quantify and benchmark safety performance. However, safety professionals have long recognised its limitations while struggling to find practical alternatives.
As Scratchie co-founder Garry Mansfield notes, "The retirement of the LTIFR calculator is timely and acknowledges what many safety professionals already know - that lost time injury frequency rate as a measurement in safety is somewhat outdated. There are other means and measures that can provide much richer data in safety, both lead indicators and lag indicators."
Let's explore why this matters for your organisation and how forward-thinking approaches to safety, like Scratchie's positive recognition model, align with this paradigm shift.
What is LTIFR and Why Was It So Widely Used?
Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate is calculated by dividing the number of lost time injuries in a reporting period by the total number of hours worked, then multiplying by one million to produce a more manageable figure. A lost time injury typically refers to a work-related injury or illness that results in at least one full shift absence from work.
The appeal of LTIFR has been its simplicity, providing organisations with a seemingly straightforward way to:
- Track safety performance over time
- Compare performance across organisations and industries
- Set clear targets for improvement
- Demonstrate safety commitment to stakeholders
Many organisations have traditionally tied executive bonuses and organisational success metrics directly to achieving low LTIFR values, with lower rates associated with better industry goodwill and increased business opportunities, particularly in high-risk sectors like construction and mining.
The Fundamental Limitations of LTIFR
The retirement of the LTIFR calculator reflects growing recognition of several critical limitations that have undermined its effectiveness as a comprehensive safety metric.
1. Measures Only a Subset of Injuries
LTIFR fails to measure actual injury frequency. Instead, it captures only a subset of workplace injuries—specifically those resulting in at least one full shift absence from work. This excludes injuries requiring medical treatment that don't result in lost time, as well as certain serious conditions that may not immediately prevent a worker from completing a shift.
2. Fails to Measure Injury Severity
LTIFR also fails to measure injury consequence or severity, as it correlates poorly with both the human and financial impacts of work-related injuries and illnesses. This limitation creates a false equivalence between minor injuries resulting in short absences and catastrophic events causing permanent disability or death.
As one example highlighted in the research: a relatively minor injury, such as a slip resulting in a knee fracture that causes a week of lost time, would negatively impact LTIFR. Meanwhile, a near-catastrophic incident, such as a container dropping from a crane that could have caused immediate death but happened to injure no one, would have no impact on the metric.
3. Overlooks Catastrophic Potential
By focusing exclusively on injuries resulting in lost time, LTIFR systematically overlooks near-miss incidents with catastrophic potential. This limitation is particularly dangerous because monitoring injury outcomes by focusing on LTIFR "essentially limits attention to high frequency but low consequence WRII outcomes and causes decision-makers to overlook the occurrence and impact of low frequency but high consequence WRII outcomes".
4. Vulnerable to Manipulation and Creates Perverse Incentives
Perhaps most concerning, the practice of linking management bonuses and organisational performance to LTIFR has reportedly led to practices focused on managing the metric rather than improving actual safety conditions. As one report notes, "growing anecdotal claims of individuals seeking to manage the measure, rather than to manage performance, have pointed to practices of deliberate manipulation and under-reporting of LTI data".
When organisations place excessive emphasis on LTIFR as a performance metric, it can create pressure to under-report injuries or rush injured workers back to work prematurely.
The Challenge for Organisations Going Forward
While this change from Safe Work Australia represents progress in safety measurement approaches, it creates certain challenges for organisations.
As Garry Mansfield observes, "The main hurdle I see with the endorsement from Safe Work Australia that the lost time injury frequency rate is outdated is that many clients aren't as sophisticated in safety and safety metrics. For example, builders' clients will continue to demand to see these rates, which organisations will feel are no longer relevant."
This highlights a critical transition period where safety professionals may need to educate stakeholders about the limitations of LTIFR while introducing more comprehensive measures of safety performance.
Beyond LTIFR: A More Holistic Approach to Safety Measurement
Safe Work Australia's move away from LTIFR aligns with a growing consensus that effective safety measurement requires a more comprehensive approach that incorporates multiple indicators of safety performance.
The agency now recommends:
"Consider the data available, what you are trying to measure, and the information needs of the audience you are reporting to. Do not rely on any one indicator or measure, like injury rates, as this approach may miss important attributes about safety culture that can inform business decision making and strategic planning. Use multiple sources of information about WHS knowledge, performance and assurance in the workplace to build a holistic view of organisational WHS performance."
Among the most promising alternatives to LTIFR are:
- Severity-based frameworks that classify injuries based on impact on worker life, rather than on organisational productivity
- Leading indicators that measure preventative activities before incidents occur, such as:
- Safety observations completed
- Hazard identifications and resolutions
- Safety training completed
- Near-miss reporting rates
- Worker engagement metrics that measure employee participation in safety processes and their perception of safety culture
- Comprehensive safety management systems that incorporate multiple indicators of safety performance
The Scratchie Approach: Positive Recognition as a Leading Indicator
At Scratchie, we've always focused on leading indicators and positive reinforcement rather than lag indicators like LTIFR. Our platform enables organisations to recognise and reward positive safety behaviours in real-time, fundamentally changing how safety is measured and incentivised.
This approach aligns perfectly with the shift away from LTIFR because:
- It focuses on prevention, not measurement after incidents occurInstead of waiting for injuries to happen and then measuring their frequency, Scratchie empowers organisations to identify and reinforce safe behaviours continuously.
- It eliminates perverse incentivesRather than creating pressure to under-report incidents or rush workers back to work, Scratchie creates positive incentives for safety awareness, reporting, and improvement.
- It builds a positive safety cultureThe platform promotes engagement with safety at all levels, encouraging workers to actively participate in safety processes rather than viewing safety as a punitive system.
- It generates rich data on leading indicatorsOrganisations using Scratchie gain insights into safety behaviours across their workforce, identifying trends and opportunities for improvement before incidents occur.
What Your Organisation Should Do Now
As the industry transitions away from over-reliance on LTIFR, here are practical steps your organisation can take:
- Audit your current safety metrics: Evaluate how heavily you rely on LTIFR and similar lag indicators, and identify gaps in your safety measurement approach.
- Develop a balanced scorecard approach: Implement a mix of leading and lagging indicators that provide a more comprehensive view of safety performance.
- Focus on building a positive safety culture: Consider how tools like Scratchie can help transform your approach to safety from punitive to positive, encouraging active engagement rather than fear of reporting.
- Educate stakeholders: Begin conversations with clients and other stakeholders about the limitations of LTIFR and the benefits of more comprehensive safety measurement approaches.
- Review incentive structures: Examine whether your current safety incentives might inadvertently encourage under-reporting or other counterproductive behaviours.
Conclusion: A Step Forward for Australian Workplace Safety
Safe Work Australia's retirement of the LTIFR calculator represents an important acknowledgment of the need for more robust, comprehensive approaches to safety measurement. While LTIFR may continue to be used as one component of safety measurement in many organisations, the future clearly lies in more balanced approaches that consider both leading and lagging indicators, and that focus on building positive safety cultures rather than simply avoiding lost time.
As Garry Mansfield concludes, "When the national regulator makes a point of removing a calculator like this, it surely indicates the metric is outdated. There are other ways to measure safety performance in a much better, rich, data-driven way."
At Scratchie, we're proud to be part of this evolution in workplace safety, offering a platform that aligns with the future of safety management by focusing on positive recognition, real-time feedback, and building cultures where safety is celebrated, not just enforced.
Email Garry directly for any questions or comments.
