Statistical Analysis for Comparisons

Companies and federal officials frequently utilize the following statistical pieces of information designed to allow the company to compare its safety and health performance with others the incident rate, illness rate, lost workday cases rate or severity rate, and restricted workday case rate. These rates, respectively, answer the questions of How often or frequently are accidents occurring and How bad are the injuries/illnesses that are occurring The number of times that occupational injuries/illnesses happen is the determinant for the incident rate, while the number of days away from work (lost-time workdays) or restricted workdays are the prime indicator of the severity rate. Both of these rates provide unique information regarding your safety and health effort. 

To find the injury/illness rate, count the number of distinct events, which resulted in injuries/illnesses. To compare your incident rate to other companies, you must normalize your data. This is accomplished by using a constant of200,000 work-hours, which was established by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The 200,000 work-hours are the number of hours that 100 full-time workers would work during 50 weeks at 40 hours per week. Thus, a company s incident rate or illness rate can be calculated in the following manner  

Number of your OSH A recordable injuries/illnesses X 200,000 (work hour constant) 

Total number hours that your employees worked during the year 

The incident rate could be a rate calculated for recordable (combined) injuries and illnesses, recordable injuries, recordable illnesses, all injuries with lost workdays, all illnesses with lost workdays or restricted workdays, injuries requiring only medical 

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