Podcast: From near misses to SIFs - rethinking safety performance metrics

In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, Donavan Hornsby, chief strategy officer with Benchmark Gensuite, shares the results of his company's "EHS Pressure Point" report on risk, readiness and the shift to AI, and offers his insights into anticipated changes and trends in workplace safety in 2026.

Below is an excerpt from the podcast:

Nicole Stempak: It's great to have you here today, Jonathan. Before we get started, because your job title is pretty interesting, I was just wondering if you could explain a little bit about what you do and your role at Benchmark Gensuite.

Donavan Hornsby: Sure. Thanks, Nicole, and thanks for having me on. I serve as Chief Strategy Officer for Benchmark Gensuite. Relevant to your audience, I've been in the EHS and sustainability space for coming up on 25 years and so I got my start working for a large multinational organization and supporting their EHS, their global EHS organization there. So I've been in this space working with EHS professionals and sustainability professionals for a very long time.

Stempak: For those who may not be familiar, can you kind of explain what Benchmark Gensuite's annual report is and anything relevant in terms of the surveying or data collection process? I preface that by saying we want to understand what the data is because we want to talk about the findings and I'm eager to hear if there was anything that surprised you or changed dramatically, for better, for worse or something that you're watching with this report.

Hornsby: So I guess a little bit of background on us and then a little bit of background on the survey and this will I think be some good context for the conversation. So you know Benchmark Gensuite, I mentioned I've been working at that organization for over two decades now. And over the course of those two decades, we have been supporting global organizations to help keep their workers safe and help them be sustainable corporate citizens for the areas and regions where they operate. And we do that by helping them essentially digitally transform their EHS and sustainability operations and we do that through enterprise software. So we basically have been evolving for many years now best practices-based SAS software and then also using advanced technologies such as AI. So this is something that we've done for a few years now. 
This year we surveyed probably 200 or 300 global organizations, and that cuts across a variety of job roles and levels. So we surveyed folks that are leading heads of EHS and safety and sustainability as well as management levels as well. So these are folks that are leading EHS programs and in functions within their organizations. And again, it was a global survey, a bunch of different types of companies represented there, different sectors and industries. So we think it was pretty good cross-section of the landscape, if you will. 
And so the themes in the survey, the questions really centered around different things like employee engagement and safety performance, both I think at the industry generally, but also within their organizations where they're employed. And then we also got into some things around like barriers to performance and other types of themes like that.
I think your last question was did anything surprise me. So a lot of interesting takeaways through those results and having done this survey before, it was good to have a little bit of a baseline to kind of see how things maybe have changed or not changed. And I think probably one of the things that maybe surprised me most was around the level of what we call under-reporting within the organizations. And I guess one point of clarification when we're talking about under-reporting, I think a lot of the perspectives that came out in the results there, it was representative in many cases of their own organizations of what they see within their organizations and not necessarily a reflection of the industry as a whole. But under-reporting was the thing that caught my eye. And by that we mean things like the ability for folks to report safety concerns, near misses, these types of things, probably very familiar to your audience. And so we found that a little bit surprising. It's just simply because having been in the space for a long time, there's been a lot of investments and I think a lot of progress we feel we've made in these areas to help make it easier for folks. So I think it's something that we obviously as an industry need to dig further into and see if we can address.

Stempak: There's so much I want to talk about just with the state of affairs. This report mentions a few concerning trends in its subtitles, rising complexity, shrinking resources and the shift to AI. So what are you seeing out there?

Hornsby: Operational leader and safety leaders certainly deal with a lot of complexity and that's certainly been the case most recently. The environments where they're working have grown more complex Their roles and responsibilities have needed to expand to address that complexity and that's I don't think anything new. But just to maybe highlight a few things that were in the survey that might be helpful for folks for some context, they're referencing things like greater production demands, greater operational complexity, complexities coming out of the supply chain. Workforce turnover is always an issue, loss of experienced employees. It's becoming greater just because of the generational shift that's happening.
Greater reliance on contractors and something that we call in the space kind of the shift of risk from your own employees to third-party contractors, but they still carry the responsibility of that risk as they're working within operations there, the supply chain shifts, the dealing and mitigating things like geopolitical challenges and economic challenges. Folks are having to adjust workflows and how they do business to address those risks.
And the last thing I would say is, and this is probably something that your audience and you probably have recognized over the past few years, EHS folks have been wearing a lot more hats than they used to. It's not just safety anymore. They're having to deal with broader ESG concerns. And so you know the S within ESG, for example, is a big umbrella and a lot of these folks that have traditionally been very focused on operational safety are now having to manage some bigger issues for that broader ESG landscape.
But you know, the great thing about EHS leaders that I've known for a long time is they don't typically dwell on the problems. In many cases, they're actually engineers, either by training or at heart, or perhaps both. And so they just want to solve problems. So they tend to not dwell very long on the problems themselves. They just want to get down to the business of solving them. And so I think we'll talk a little bit more about AI, but everybody's super excited about AI. Obviously they're very concerned because they're risk professionals, risk management professionals, and so they inherently are concerned about the risks that technology will introduce into the environment and the workplaces, but it's also a huge opportunity and that's kind of been borne out by some of early work that we've been doing within our community.

Stempak: Looking at the report, something that really stuck with me is seeing that 45% of respondents say injury frequency increased over the past 12 months. That's 150% year over year increase and the injury severity is also worsening. You know, 39% report an increase in injury severity, more than 200% increase year over year. Was this a surprise to you? And what do you make of these numbers that you found?

Hornsby: Yeah, it was a surprise. But I guess when you think about some of the challenges that I mentioned earlier, if you just take one of those, for example, contractor workforces, you know, the more companies are shifting risk to contractors that are coming on sites. I mean, it may be obvious to folks, but you're bringing folks on that don't know the environment as well, maybe don't have as much training in a lot of cases. I think the risk assessments that in prequalification that are done around some of those contractors in some cases unfortunately are seen as a check the box exercise that we truly don't understand the risks and so when you just take that particular problem, perhaps is not as surprising. 
And I guess one thing to clarify too around some of those numbers, they're big numbers, but it's worth noting that the survey folks were, you know, these were reflections on their own organizations, not necessarily the industry as a whole. So I would suggest that the industry as a whole hasn't seen numbers like this, I don't believe.
But certainly some organizations that operate within the industry have experienced some of these things and it's for you know some of those reasons I just mentioned there. And I think that there's one thing worth noting too and you've probably seen this as well. I certainly have seen this as part of the conversation over the past few years. That's the one thing that maybe we need to look at next year in in the survey is to dig a little bit deeper into what we are referring to when we're talking about injury frequency because one thing that the that industry generally has done really well is reducing the prevalence of minor incidents.
And so if you go to a dashboard for an EHS leader, you're going to see a trend line that's steadily over time and going down and down, which is great. The problem is that it doesn't reflect what's actually happening with significant incidents, which is why you have a big focus in industry around SIF prevention because while minor safety incidents have decreased over time, for the most part significant incidents have either had a flat performance or they've increased, which is what you're seeing in some of those numbers that you referenced before. So things like slips, trips and falls as they say have gone down, but overall significant cases have either plateaued or gone up. And so this is what's keeping folks up at night is how do we address this? Because these are the cases where folks are going to the hospital, folks are dealing with some things that have a significant impact on their lives and their livelihoods.

Stempak: Again, so many things to unpack, but I guess I'm just curious, like what issues are you personally or discussing with your colleagues, are you seeing gaining kind of more attention or more attraction? I know that there's always a breeze that flows out of Washington and that could be affecting things too, as other issues kind of ebb and flow. So I'm just curious to hear what you're seeing as coming to the forefront or if you see any other kinds of trends fading into the background.

Hornsby: I agree, obviously political winds have an effect on these things. And you know, you could, if you just look at the US, for example, I know there's concern around enforcement, for example, at the end of the day though most of the the professionals that I work with are not swayed by politics. I mean, at the end of the day, they just want to make sure that their folks are getting home safely and as long as that is your North Star for the organization I think good stuff is going to happen and the focus is going to be where it needs to be, regardless of what the political winds may dictate or influence. 
That being said, I think maybe I'll start with things that perhaps are fading or or perhaps maybe less intensive. If you look at, if you just take sustainability, climate risk, these types of issues, certainly the case within the US, these types of issues have lost steam because, you know, lack of enforcement, lack of investment, some of these areas. And you know, the reality is, as I mentioned before, is that for some companies, they're still charging forward because they see, you know, there's a bottom-line benefit to investing in some of these areas. And as long as you recognize that, then you know the politics and you know, lack of maybe regulatory momentum doesn't necessarily play. So I think that's just kind of recognizing the obvious that there's been some fade and some loss of steam in that area. 
But I think if you take it back or if I take it back to safety and EHS, generally speaking, there's probably a few key areas where I see the most attention, most traction. I mentioned SIF prevention before, so I can speak to that a little bit more. Yeah, there are, there are several industry groups that have been working on SIF prevention for a very long time.I do believe that we have more momentum over the past year than we ever have around those topics and it's it probably partly because of the trends as that I touched on before, but also because I think we have more opportunity now than ever before to apply some new technologies to help address it.
I think there's a lot of hand wringing before and people were just kind of throwing the same approach and methodologies to the problem and wringing their hands over it. But at this point now with, you know, with what we've been from Benchmark Gensuite standpoint, we've been investing in SIF prevention for a number of years now, but very specifically around advanced technologies to help address this. So we've been doing some really, really cool stuff where we've been helping organizations identify hidden risks. Because if you just take the job of a safety leader and their team, gone are the days now with some of the technologies we have, gone are the days where you used to have to comb through spreadsheets with lists of near misses and observations and things like that and trying to derive insights out of that, now we can apply as we have AI models to this. And so we're now servicing risks that were otherwise hidden before. No longer do we have to go based off of our gut, we can actually validate that against some real data and we have tons of data. There's no lack of data in the EHS world. We just needed technology to help us make sense of it all. So SIF prevention is certainly one. 
I think the other probably big theme where there's a lot of traction is around frontline worker safety, and that's a big umbrella. But if you look at the front line and have conversations with these folks, they're not going talk to you about complexity, they're going to talk to you about usability. And so if you look at the lack of progress that we've made with the frontline, I would point to issues around usability of technology and I'm talking equipment that they may use on a job site, but also the technology that they're familiar with. And to the extent that you can eliminate the barriers and simplify things for folks, whether it's equipment they use or the technology, mobile technology that they're using on the frontline, the further along we're going to get to address this. 
We hosted a couple of weeks ago a conversation with probably around a couple of dozen EHS directors, VPs, SVPs and chief safety officers. And one of the biggest topics was exactly this issue of how do we address frontline worker safety through simplicity and usability? And I'll give you an example. One of the folks that I've known for a while, she was sharing the example of they're trying to tackle this problem and their particular challenge is that they have a bunch of, as she said, 20-somethings that work for their organization. They do not want to go fill out a big long form about a vehicle safety accident that they were involved in. They don't want to go fill out a big form about a job site that they're trying to assess for risk and develop a work instruction around. They simply want to, and I'm not kidding, they want to take a picture of the environment or the job at hand or the vehicle accident they just were a part of and let the AI do all the magic. That's the simplicity you're looking for. They just simply want to take a picture and let the AI do the magic. So that's the challenge for us. 
But the cool thing is, is that we actually are in a place now where we can do it. And that's pretty exciting because, I mean, ultimately the success of these programs is going to hinge on our ability to engage those frontline folks in meaningful ways and enable them to do what they're doing and actually inform their work with what with what they need to care about without it feeling like a bolt-on operation, which is what safety feels like for a lot of folks.

Stempak: So where do we go from here? What can safety professionals do in their capacity with limited resources, increasing demands and potential red tape or push back from management or frontline workers to get moving, to start making progress or chipping away at some of these bigger problems?

Hornsby: Good question. If I think back to that conversation that I referenced before a couple of weeks ago with that room full of EHS leaders, the great thing about that session was that they were talking. They took some time away from the day-to-day grind and they forced themselves to put themselves in a room with their counterparts and they just started sharing.
Sometimes we get a little bit too myopic and we think that we can solve these things ourselves. We're smart people. We've seen all the movies before. But the reality is that there's always somebody, you know, sitting next to us or in the room that has probably tackled that before and maybe approached a little bit differently. And so probably the worst thing that folks can do is go it alone. It's still crazy to me that we still have to encourage each other to share, share best practices, share challenges. But ultimately that's where all the progress is going to be made and found. That's why groups like NSC and ASSP and others that have these working groups around SIF prevention, like I mentioned before, that's why they're so successful, is because they're getting the word out there and giving folks a forum through which that they can share. 
I think another one is around culture. You know, where does safety go from here? Culture. I think every single EHS or safety event that I've ever attended, there's always at least one segment around culture. I'm probably going to ruffle some feathers here. I do have some allies out there, so hopefully they're listening as well. But I would suggest that we need to think about safety culture differently. I see culture in many ways. While it's obviously an influencer, I also see it as an outcome, it's a reflection of activities and inputs. And so my recommendation to folks is maybe think about safety culture a little bit differently. In my experience, I think the best way to address safety is by getting deeper into the organization, and as I mentioned before, getting closer to the point of action, closer to where the folks are doing the real work on the front line. I think in some cases, EHS, we feel like we're at the front line, but we're not quite deep enough. And you know, to your point, it's all about connecting with individuals.
You know, Gen. Z is not the only generation that wants to feel connected and wants to feel heard. I know we make a lot of to do about that perspective and that sentiment around your generation. But the reality is everybody wants to feel connected. Everybody wants to be enabled to do their best work and to the extent that we can spend time, energy investments around that usability theme I mentioned before, if we can address usability, then we will influence outcomes and then ultimately you're going to have a culture that is reflective of high safety performance and all those things.
But how do we get there? And obviously I'm very biased. I believe that technology is certainly not the only key, but it's certainly a key to making that happen. So my recommendation to folks is don't sit on your hands with AI. Explore it. Explore AI. Start working with your organization, making the case for investment in AI. That's one thing that we're going to be working on this year quite a bit. I think industry as a whole is proving out some of the use cases and actually being able to quantify the value and turn on that investment in AI. 
But I think one thing we need to keep in mind, and this is something I think would be shared by anybody that's listening right now, is we need to make sure that you've heard this concept of human-in-the-loop. And so the more we do with AI, the more we need to remind ourselves that we need to keep a human in the loop. What we don't want folks to do is to stop using their brains. We don't want them to stop, you know, leaning on their own expertise or the expertise of others. We need to make sure that those things are working hand in hand, and ultimately we're going to be able to address this in a way that minimizes risk, but also can actually help us address things that we've struggled with for many, many years.

Stempak: I'm curious because our conversation sometimes can skew negatively when we're talking about problems, but what are you optimistic about or what, if anything, in this report showed you something to get excited about and to latch on to?

Hornsby: I've touched on this already, but there were some questions around AI specifically and advanced technology specifically and the willingness and interest as I mentioned before has turned the corner. And I think that the balance between opportunity and risk has shifted towards opportunity in a lot of people's minds. That’s important because it just means that folks are, there's a willingness. We've gone from awareness to a willingness, I believe. And that's a fundamental shift and an important shift because now we know that we can start moving conversations away from the alarming aspects of AI and doesn't mean you forget about it completely to more about how do we take this and we start reshaping and transforming the EHS function as a whole.
I think sometimes the challenge with things like AI and advanced tech is that people are thinking about this in really big grandiose terms and that is paralyzing in some respects and people are afraid to get started, but we approach this just like we've approached everything else. You know, you just take it piece by piece, bit by bit and you just start trying some things. And that's what we've found over the past couple of years is that you know whether it's improving or trying to address the MSD problem that we have with through ergonomics programs. Well, now we have this amazing video analytic capability, so you don't have to have an ergo expert running around to every single site in your company, because first of all, there is no such company that has those types of resources. So how do we approach it differently to your point?
And so we can leverage things like video analytics to coach people on the proper use of ergonomics and carrying out a job task. And suddenly now we're making really massive impacts, despite the resource issues they might be having.
I mentioned this before, SIFs is a huge issue, a huge challenge for folks. But suddenly now we have a technology that can help you identify hidden risks and precursors, conditions that might lead to that. And so all those near misses that we saw before, the big fear is that one of those near misses is going to turn into something really terrible for one of your employees. And so how do we identify the conditions that may ultimately lead one of those near misses to be something catastrophic? And we have a technology now that can help you do that. We don't have to worry about coming through spreadsheets of data anymore. We can have some of these AI models like the ones that we've been working on address this very directly. 
There is a complacency that happens when you've been doing this for a long time because you feel like, oh, I've seen all the movies, I can work off of my guts. But the reality is that we found in some of this work that we've been doing with some of our, you know, most senior EHS leaders, the SIF models and the AI models are now challenging some of those assumptions and it's OK. And I think sometimes, maybe there's a little bit of pride in there, but I think once you can get over the pride, you realize, wow, I can really start making an impact for my sites and my people.

Stempak: I love that we're having this conversation in the first quarter of 2026 because the year's just getting started. There's so much time to make changes. On that note, is there anything that you are kind of looking forward to or excited about kind of being able to try or to implement or just something that you're keeping a close watch on as the year goes on?

Hornsby: Yeah, a lot of things we're looking at and I'm looking at personally. It's interesting because I was reflecting on the two plus decades that I've been in the space and there's a lot of folks out there that I know that have been in the EHS and sustainability space for just as long, if not longer. I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of an EHS management system, it's where you take people and you connect people with processes and connect it with the mission and objectives of the organization and you use things like best practices, frameworks and technology to help enable that, and then some form of continuous improvement. And so I think what I'm most interested about this year and kind of near term, it's going to be interesting to see what AI is going to do to evolve our ability to manage all of this through this kind of EHS management system approach because in a lot of ways the technology has always been the enabler of that, you know, connecting people and process and all that. But now we have ways to address it more quickly and address complexity in ways we never have before. So I'm very interested to see how that's going to play out and that kind of leads me a view to technology and what I'll call the ecosystem.
We have a really big opportunity now, and this is what I think a lot of folks are excited about. Safety has always struggled, at least within a lot of organizations, with connecting what they're trying to do from a safety standpoint with the operations of the organization. And what we've been able to do over the past few years through advanced tech and analytics and AI is to really solidify that connection. And so when we approach frontline problems and we put a really simple to use user interface, mobile interface in the hands of folks out there that are working on a particular project in a confined space or what have you, we now have the ability to embed very naturally what we want from a safety standpoint into the work that they're doing. 
And then on the tail end of this whole thing and the downstream is that we from an analytics standpoint now have the ability to look at these problems and in all the data that we have amassed and to figure out where we need to spend our time. I mean, that's ultimately EHS leaders, everybody listening right now, that's ultimately what they're trying to get is where do I need to spend my time? Provide me some insights into understanding where my risks are, where I need to be spending my time, where my team needs to be spending their time and energy. And once we can do that, we're going to start seeing real progress. I mean, we've made great progress, but we still have a lot of work to do as we highlighted in in the survey here, but to the extent that we can start informing people on where they spend their time with confidence and validation, we're going to start seeing safer, more productive plants that are ultimately sending folks home to their families. 
And that's what it's all about. And I think if you can't get excited about anything else, the potential of AI to help us address that I think it's enough to get folks rallying around this.

Stempak: I can think of no better question or comment to add. So thank you so much for your time and talking with me today. For those listening, we'll make sure that the 2026 Benchmark 10 Suite report is available for you to dig into further and thanks for making this all possible. Donovan, it's been such a pleasure talking to you today.

Hornsby: Great to talk to you as well, Nicole. Thank you so much.

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Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast offers news and information for the people who make, store and move things and those who manage and maintain the facilities where that work gets done. Manufacturers from chemical producers to automakers to machine shops can listen for critical insights into the technologies, economic conditions and best practices that can influence how to best run facilities to reach operational excellence.

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