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Avetta has released its Insights and Impact Report 2026, analysing how nine different risk management capabilities influence safety outcomes globally and across the Asia-Pacific region.
The report draws on three years of global data from 2022 to 2024 across more than 130,000 suppliers in Avetta’s network. It introduces a new metric called the global severe injury rate (GSIR), designed to standardise comparisons of severe injuries across regions with different reporting frameworks.
The central finding is that organisations taking a systems-based approach by layering multiple risk management capabilities over time are recording stronger results than those relying on individual programs in isolation. Across APAC, that integrated approach corresponded with a 74 per cent improvement in severe injury rates – higher than any other region studied.
“Supply chains have become increasingly distributed and unpredictable, forcing organisations to navigate risk faster than ever before,” Arshad Matin, CEO at Avetta, explained. “Our 2026 report confirms that health and safety performance doesn’t improve by simply adding individual programs in a vacuum.”
Australian Workplace Safety Context
The report arrives against a backdrop of ongoing workplace safety challenges in Australia. According to Safe Work Australia, 188 workers lost their lives due to work-related injuries in 2024. There were also 146,700 serious workers’ compensation claims involving at least one week of working time lost in 2023-24, equivalent to more than 400 serious claims a day across the country.
In the United States, the National Safety Council recorded 5,070 workplace fatalities in 2024, amounting to 13 families every day confronting the loss of a loved one who did not return home from work.
Three Pillars: Foundation, Visibility And Strategy
The report is structured around three core arguments about what drives improvements in severe injury and fatality rates.
The first is that foundational health and safety capabilities matter. Organisations that implement core risk management processes such as pre-qualification, safety audits, insurance verification, worker management and worksite scheduling and permissions see lower GSIR and fatality rates. In APAC, the data showed GSIR and fatality rates improved by 36 per cent and 16 per cent respectively after going through Avetta’s insurance verification process.
The second is that broader risk visibility matters. APAC organisations that implemented and continued to improve their ESG and sustainability risk visibility saw, on average, 41 per cent fewer severe incidents and 37 per cent fewer fatalities.
The third is that strategy matters. Organisations integrating capabilities over time recorded up to a 97 per cent improvement in fatality rates globally and the 74 per cent improvement in severe injury rates in APAC. That APAC figure compared with 20 per cent for North America, 20 per cent for Europe and 52 per cent for Latin America.
“The organisations seeing the most dramatic results – and building safer, more resilient operations – are those that shift from a siloed approach to a connected, strategic system,” Matin added. “They aren’t just managing compliance – they’re cultivating a state of readiness.”
A New Way To Measure Severe Injuries
One of the technical contributions of the report is the GSIR metric itself. Different countries define and report severe injuries in different ways. Australia uses lost time incidents, the United States tracks days away from work, the United Kingdom distinguishes between major injuries over and under seven days, and China records serious, severe or major injuries.
Avetta’s Customer Insights team developed the GSIR to enable consistent benchmarking despite these differences. The formula multiplies 200,000 by the ratio of total severe injuries to total hours worked. The fatality rate is calculated as 100,000 multiplied by total fatalities divided by the number of employees.
The report positions GSIR as a bridge between the industry’s traditional focus on incident frequency and the emerging push for severity-based lagging indicators. That push received a boost with the release of ASTM E2920-26 in January 2026, a new global standard for recording and benchmarking priority occupational health and safety incidents. Avetta has been involved in developing the standard and has begun incorporating the framework into its platform.
What The Foundational Data Shows
Across the five foundational health and safety capabilities studied, the report found consistent correlations with improved safety performance.
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Suppliers who completed pre-qualification reported an 18.33 per cent lower GSIR and a 34.73 per cent lower fatality rate compared to those that did not complete the process. Pre-qualification also yielded estimated overhead savings of $7,037 per supplier annually and 42 work hours saved.
Safety audits corresponded with a 1.69 per cent improvement in GSIR and a 16.74 per cent improvement in fatality rates. In the utilities and power generation sector specifically, suppliers completing audits reported nearly 30 per cent lower fatality rates.
Insurance verification showed a slight increase in GSIR of 1.79 per cent but a 16 per cent improvement in fatality rates. The report notes this pattern – where reported incident rates can rise while fatalities fall – reflects improved visibility and reporting rather than worsening safety conditions.
Worker management tools corresponded with a 14.52 per cent improvement in GSIR and a 22.47 per cent reduction in fatality rates. Suppliers with high worker compliance reported a 51.36 per cent reduction in fatality rates compared to those with low compliance.
Worksite scheduling and permissions showed the most dramatic fatality improvement among individual capabilities, with a 68.87 per cent reduction. When combined with job hazard analyses and end-of-project evaluations, the fatality rate reduction reached 93.32 per cent.
Beyond Health And Safety
The report’s second section examines four capabilities that extend risk visibility beyond traditional health and safety functions: ESG and sustainability, business risk monitoring, cybersecurity and the Safety Maturity Index.
Suppliers at the highest ESG maturity level (scored 85 to 100 out of 100) recorded a 25.42 per cent improvement in GSIR and a 53.5 per cent improvement in fatality rates compared to those at the lowest level. In the oil and gas industry specifically, ESG innovators saw fatality rates 81.31 per cent better than early-stage peers.
Business risk monitoring corresponded with a 9.38 per cent improvement in GSIR and a 28.72 per cent improvement in fatality rates. Cybersecurity capabilities showed similar patterns, with a 9.52 per cent GSIR improvement and 22.39 per cent fatality rate improvement.
In EMEA, suppliers included in Avetta’s cybersecurity capability reported fatality rates nearly 85 per cent lower than those without the capability.
Suppliers that adopted the Safety Maturity Index saw a 28.57 per cent improvement in GSIR and a 21.88 per cent improvement in fatality rates.
The Compounding Effect
The report’s third section presents its most striking finding. When five foundational safety management capabilities were combined, the data showed a 39.3 per cent reduction in severe injuries and a 97.3 per cent reduction in fatalities.
When those five capabilities were further combined with ESG, business risk monitoring or the Safety Maturity Index, early data – while not yet meeting statistical significance thresholds – showed zero fatalities across all three combinations.
“What stands out in the data is that meaningful improvements in health and safety performance aren’t driven by individual actions, but by how organisations build and operationalise their overall approach to supply chain risk management,” Matin concluded. “A strong foundation creates consistency, greater visibility brings clarity and a coordinated strategy ensures those elements work together so work can move forward safely, predictably and confidently.”
Real-World Case Studies
The report includes a case study of Cargill’s St. Clair salt manufacturing facility, which manages more than 100 daily contractors. After implementing Avetta’s worksite scheduling and permissions tool, the facility reported zero contractor injuries since 2022 and a 90 per cent reduction in contractor onboarding time.
A second case study examines an unnamed global enterprise commerce company with more than 25,000 suppliers and 135,000 connected workers spanning 25 countries. Starting with Avetta more than seven years ago, the company strategically rolled out capabilities region by region.
That organisation achieved 100 per cent pre-qualification adoption across all regions. Its audits uncovered 1,545 suppliers with critical safety gaps, and proactive supplier readiness support drove a 48 per cent reduction in median completion time for audit-related forms. Across the supply chain, GSIR improved in every region, with APAC recording a 74 per cent improvement.
The company’s suppliers collectively saved an estimated $8.1 million in overheads annually and 69,302 work hours after implementing Avetta’s risk management processes.
The Role Of AI
The report also addresses the growing role of AI in supply chain risk management, though with caveats. It argues AI is only as effective as the foundation behind it and cannot create governance, validation and operational context on its own.
“When AI is introduced into a system like that, it acts as a force multiplier, turning insight into action at scale,” Matin stated.
Avetta positions AI as a “readiness engine” when grounded in trusted systems – enabling organisations to act on insights with confidence, scale decision-making and maintain visibility that is explainable, auditable and tied to real-world execution.
Continuous Improvement Framework
The report recommends organisations adopt a Plan-Do-Check-Act methodology to make safety improvements repeatable, scalable and sustainable. This aligns with globally recognised standards such as ISO 45001 and connects risk management activities into a continuous cycle where insights inform how work is planned, executed, evaluated and improved.
The approach moves through three stages: primary due diligence through pre-qualification, assurance and monitoring at the worksite level, and post-work review between clients and suppliers.
Avetta is trusted by more than 360,000 businesses across more than 120 countries.
Last Updated on June 30, 2026 by Nick Ross
