Is my industrial safety program efficient? The basic metrics to track

Let’s start with some basic metrics like Lost Time Injury Rate. To understand it let’s first look at what a lost time injury means.

What is a Lost Time Injury? 

To consider an accident as Lost Time Injury it must happen at the workplace during working hours and lead to the following consequences:

• loss of consciousness

• missing workdays

• work restriction or a job transfer

• illness or injury required treatment beyond first aid.

How to calculate Lost Time Injury rate (LTIR)?

The formula is: 

The LTI rate calculated by the formula above shows how many Lost Time Injuries have happened per 1 mln working hours.

Now when you know this metric you can compare your company with others in the niche and understand if your safety program requires an upgrade or you’re far beyond your competitors. You can find LTIRs of the other companies in their safety reports or in the market overviews made by media or statistics agencies in your niche.

LTIR is not enough

LTIR is the common metric for many markets from Australia and the USA to the Middle East and Asia however comparing only LTIRs can lead to incorrect conclusions since the metric doesn’t show the severity of the incidents.

For example, Company A has 2 fractures, 1 eye irritation and 3 strains during the year while Company B has 4 eye irritations and 2 strains which means both have 6 Lost Time Injuries and similar LTIRs if they are of similar sizes. However, 2 fractures of Company A cost far more expensive since employees will be long away from work or even transferred to another job at all. To understand which workplaces seem to be more dangerous than the others it’s useful to consider such a metric as Lost Time Injury Severity Rate (LTISR).

How to calculate Lost Time Injury Severity rate (LTISR)?

The formula is: 

*200 000 is the number of working hours worked by 100 employees during a year (50 weeks) if they are working 40 hours a week.

LTISR shows how many workdays were lost per 100 employees: the higher LTISR the more severe traumas are happening at the workplace. 

Fatal accidents included: one more basic metric

Accident severity influences the company a lot: high LTISR is a sign that some of your workspaces (or the whole company) require more money wasting than possible for the others; and your reputation as an employer is under the risk since high severe workplaces are not very attractive for the workers. 

Fatalities have surely the most serious consequences for the company in terms of money and reputation. According to the US statistics one fatal accident “costs” $1.2 mln. That’s the reason to track the one more basic metric that includes deaths — TRIR. 

What is the Total Recordable Incident?

Total Recordable Incident is considered any time when an injury happens at the workplace, leads to any work restriction and includes death. In fact, it’s LTI (Lost Time Injuries) which we’ve calculated above plus fatalities. 

How to calculate Total Recordable Incident rate (TRIR)?

The formula is similar to LTIR with those differences that we have Total Recordable Incidents instead of Lost Time Injuries in a numerator:

The calculated number shows the amount of all incidents including fatalities that happened per 1 mln working hours. Knowledge of this metric also allows comparing your workplaces to each other; comparing your company to the competitors and the niche benchmark but now in consideration of fatal cases. 

The bench of metrics described above can help you evaluate your safety activities not only in terms of revenue and business reputation but also sustainability: your environmental, social and governance risks (ESG). We’ll talk about it in future articles.