'We want to shift our focus away from frequency and instead think about severity — and measure it' says speaker at Canadian Safety Summit
At the 2025 Canadian Safety Summit, John Maynard, sales engineer with EcoOnline, delivers a wake-up call to health and safety leaders across the country. The message is clear: Serious Injuries and Fatalities (SIFs) demand more than awareness — they deserve a permanent place on the safety KPI dashboard.
“For decades, we've measured safety by counting the small stuff — cuts, slips, minor incidents,” Maynard says. “But what we're finding is that lowering those incident rates doesn't necessarily lower the SIFs. They just don't track together.”
This contradiction is exactly what Maynard wants the indby reseustry to confront. Backed arch from institutions like the Campbell Institute, he argues that many traditional safety programs create a false sense of security. Organizations often believe that if the minor incidents go down, serious ones will follow. That assumption, he says, is flawed.
“Current evidence actually contradicts that entirely,” Maynard explains. “You’ll see a graph of incident rates going down, but SIF rates stay basically the same. That’s the danger of relying on frequency metrics alone.”
The real cost of SIFs
Maynard makes it clear that SIFs aren’t just numbers on a chart — they’re life-altering events. “It’s not just a line item. It’s not just something to fill out on a form,” he tells the audience. “There’s a massive effect to the person involved. There’s an impact on their families. There’s trauma to the co-workers. The consequences ripple out.”
But beyond the human toll, he urges leaders to consider the financial and reputational impact. “Sometimes you’re talking to stakeholders or owners who need to hear about the business cost — fines, lost productivity, insurance spikes, reputational damage,” he says. “You don’t want your company in the news because of a fatality. Is that how people should remember your name?”
The call to reframe safety culture
Maynard pushes companies to shift from frequency-focused safety to severity-focused safety. That starts, he says, by looking at SIFs and their precursors as key performance indicators.
“We want to shift our focus away from frequency and instead think about severity — and measure it,” he says. He encourages companies to go beyond surface-level risk assessments. “Are your controls verified in the field, or just written down on paper? Are you reviewing risk assessments regularly? Are you getting feedback from the boots on the ground?”
This, he insists, is where digital tools play a transformational role. He uses Black & McDonald as an example of a success story. The utility company has more than 6,500 employees and it digitized its entire safety program using EcoOnline’s platform. “No more binders. No more running back to the trailer,” he says. “Everything’s on their phone. The impact was immediate — better reporting, faster response, and a stronger safety culture.”
Convincing the C-Suite
One of the key challenges facing safety leaders is getting buy-in from senior executives. “It’s not just about the people impact, although that should be enough,” says Maynard. “There’s a strong business case here. Preventing a SIF can save you from fines, reputational loss, and long-term damage to your workforce.”
He says some safety professionals are beginning to embrace SIFs as a KPI because it aligns with both data and experience. “They’re buying into it,” Maynard notes. “The research matches what they’ve seen in the field. They know that just tracking slips and trips doesn’t prevent catastrophic injuries.”
From reactive to proactive
Ultimately, Maynard wants organizations to move from reactive safety to proactive, systemic prevention. That means scrutinizing high-risk activities, empowering field-level reporting, and embracing real-time data.
“Companies with strong EHS cultures see three to four times higher revenue,” he tells the crowd. “It’s not just about safety — it’s about agility, visibility, and consistency. It’s about making sure everyone gets home safe at the end of the day.”
Maynard hopes that ubiquitous motivation among safety professionals will lead to SIFs becoming their main performance metric.
