Incident Rate
As a business, we all want to know how our company compares to others within our industry. As a matter of fact, knowing where you stand in relation to your competition is just smart business. An easy way yo assess your safety efforts compared to your competition is by figuring out your Incident Rate (IR).
What is an Incident Rate (IR)?
Every year the Department of Labor takes all of the injury and illness information filed to calculate the average percentage rate of injuries your industry experiences for every 100 full-time employees. Whether you have 25 employees or 2,500 employees, you can compare your safety record with other companies in the same industry. In addition to comparing yourself to large companies, you can measure your own success and make adjustments in-house.
How do you compute your incident rate?
It’s quite easy to determine your incident rate if you have data for the total amount of hours worked by all your employees for an entire year. If you don’t have the exact figure, you can estimate employees working an 8-hour day on a five day work week minus non-working days, like personal days and holidays. Once you get this number, just fill in the IR equation. After you compute your IR, go to either the National or State Incident Rates and look up your industry. Your exact business may not be categorized, but you should be able to generalize and find something close. For example, you may not find a listing for lava rock retaining wall contractors, but you will find a listing for Masonry, Stonework, or Plastering.
By computing your IR, you will know how you stand up to the competition. How you use this assessment tool is up to you. If anything, you will know if you are ahead or behind of the competition in regards to injury and illness.
IR = # of injury and illness x 200,000 / Total Hours Worked
Business Knowledge Center
DTRIC Insurance's Business Knowledge Center offers topics like property management, work safety management, and more.