The OSHA incident rate is a commonly used safety metric that measures the number of injuries per 100 full-time workers per year. It is calculated by taking the number of injuries multiplied by 200,000 and dividing by the total number of hours worked. This provides a standardized rate that can be used to compare a company's safety performance over time and against industry averages. The document provides an example calculation of an incident rate for a fictional company. It also explains how incidence rates published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics can help companies evaluate how their safety record compares to other firms of similar size within their industry.

1. OSHA Incident Rate
OSHA Incident Rate
If you are new to the safety profession and overwhelmed with all the lingo the below will help
you understand one of the most widely used leading indicators used – the OSHA incident rate.
Before we get into how it is constructed I thought it might be nice to provide a link to the BLS
calculator for it. If you are not interested in the nuts and bolts and just want an answer – sue
this http://data.bls.gov/iirc/?data_tool=IIRC
However, if your still with me, here is the complete review as taken from
http://www.bls.gov/iif/osheval.htm
How To Compute a Firm’s Incidence Rate for Safety Management
Incidence rates can be used to show the relative level of injuries and illnesses among different
industries, firms, or operations within a single firm. Because a common base and a specific
period of time are involved, these rates can help determine both problem areas and progress in
preventing work-related injuries and illnesses. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has
developed these instructions to provide a step by step approach for employers to evaluate their
firm’s injury and illness record.
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2. BLS also has a new online calculator that makes it easy to compute incidence rates for your
establishment and to compare them to your industry’s averages.
How to compute incidence rates
(a) The number of nonfatal injuries and illnesses. This number is available several ways:
From your Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses (Log), OSHA’s Form 300—you
can count the number of OSHA recordable cases for the year, or
From your Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses (Summary), OSHA’s Form
300A—you can add the number of recordable cases entered in Column H (cases with
days away from work) + Column I (cases with job transfer or restriction) + Column J
(other recordable cases),
From the BLS Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses form, if your company was
surveyed for the calendar year for which incidence rates are desired—you can add the
number of nonfatal recordable cases entered. Add the entries from Part 1B: Summary of
Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses. Only include the entries in Column H (cases with
days away from work) + Column I (cases with job transfer or restriction) + Column J
(other recordable cases) in your calculation.
(b) The number of hours all employees actually worked. “Hours worked” should not include any
nonwork time, even though paid, such as vacation, sick leave, holidays, etc. If actual hours
worked are not available for employees paid on commission, by salary, or by the mile, etc.,
hours worked may be estimated on the basis of scheduled hours or 8 hours per workday. This
number is also available from several sources:
From your Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses,
From the BLS Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses form, if your company was
surveyed for the calendar year for which incidence rates are desired,
From payroll or other time records.
An incidence rate of injuries and illnesses may be computed from the following formula:
(Number of injuries and illnesses X 200,000) / Employee hours worked = Incidence rate
(The 200,000 hours in the formula represents the equivalent of 100 employees working 40
hours per week, 50 weeks per year, and provides the standard base for the incidence rates.)
You can use the same formula to compute incidence rates for:
Injury and illness cases with days away from work (Column H),
Injury and Illness cases with job transfer or restriction (Column I),
Injury and illness cases with days away from work, or job transfer or restriction, or both
(DART) (Column H + Column I),
Other recordable injury and illness cases (Column J),
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3. Injury-only cases (Column M1),
Illness-only cases (Column M2 + M3 + M4 + M5 + M6).
NOTE: When comparing illness rates by types of illness, use 20,000,000 hours instead of
200,000 hours to get a rate per 10,000 full-time employees.
An example
The following discussion illustrates how ABC Company—-a fictitious construction machinery
manufacturer with 200 employees—-might conduct a statistical safety and health evaluation.
The ABC Company has 15 injuries and illnesses logged and 400,000 hours worked by all
employees during 2005. Using the formula, the incidence rate would be calculated as follows:
(15 x 200,000) / 400,000 = 7.5
The same formula can be used to compute the incidence rate for the most serious injury and
illness cases, defined here as cases that result in workers taking time off from their jobs or being
transferred to another job or doing lighter (restricted) duties. ABC Company had 7 such cases.
The incidence rate for these 7 cases is computed as:
(7 x 200,000) / 400,000 = 3.5
How are incidence rates used?
Incidence rates take on more meaning for an employer when the injury and illness experience of
his or her firm is compared with that of other employers doing similar work with workforces of
similar size. Information available from BLS permits detailed comparisons by industry and size
of firm.
The following tables illustrate how detailed comparisons can help a firm evaluate its safety and
health experience more precisely.
2006 incidence rates for Total recordable cases of Injury and Illness cases with
construction machinery injuries and illnesses days away from work, job
manufacturers transfer, or restriction
All workforce sizes 8.8 4.5
Firms with 50 to 249 9.7 5.3
employees
ABC Company (200 workers) 7.5 3.5
In this example, the injury and illness rates for ABC Company are below the industry wide and
similar-size averages for construction machinery manufacturers.
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4. Information available from BLS goes beyond giving the average incidence rate for a particular
industry and employment-size class: Data show how individual establishment rates within an
industry-size combination are distributed.
Points on these rate arrays, called the first quartile, median, and third quartile, help answer the
following question: What proportion of comparable employers have rates that are lower than (or
higher than) my firm’s rates? The following table for construction machinery manufacturer firms
employing 50 to 249 workers illustrates how these statistical measures work.
2006 incidence rates for Total recordable cases of Injury and Illness cases with
injuries and illnesses days away from work, job
transfer, or restriction
Average (mean) for all 9.7 5.3
establishments
First quartile—One-fourth 3.1 2.1
establishments had a rate
lower than or equal to
Median—One-half of the 8.5 4.0
establishments had a rate
lower than or equal to
Third quartile—Three-fourths of 16.6 7.4
the establishments had a rate
lower than or equal to
When ABC Company extends its rate comparison to these measures, the company finds that its
total recordable rate (7.5) falls between the first quartile rate and the median rate for
construction machinery manufacturers of similar size, and its rate for cases with days away from
work, job transfer, or restriction (3.5) falls between the corresponding first quartile and median
rates for construction machinery manufacturers of similar size. In other words, both of ABC
Company’s rates are lower than the rates for at least one-half of the medium-size construction
machinery manufacturers. This analysis reinforces earlier findings that ABC Company has a
lower incidence rate of injury and illness in its workplace than do most other construction
machinery manufacturers of its size.
If you have questions any additional questions on the OSHA Incident Rate of any other safety
metric let me know.
For more information see the http://theoshablog.com
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