Can any one help with AFRs, I have found several formulas but wanted to know what a standard formula might be, the HSE formula does seem to be used by some people but not as a standard. (Number of accidents x 100000/no of hours worked) Also does any know what the rate equates to? Our AFR came out at 24.38 using the HSE formula but what is the 24.28 as a frequency? One last question, does any one know how to find any data to compare AFR against other in an industry. David

I use AFR's as I have to report to the group on a monthly basis, I use the formula No of loss day cases X200,000 Divided by the total hours worked in the month. All accidents get investigated and corrective actions put in place, We have one of the lowest accident rates in the group

See what I mean

Never used AFRs myself and this is an interesting thread; however if the objective is to reduce the number shouldn't the effort be in understand how and why they occur rather than number crunching? Agree that you need to know the size of the problem as a benchmark, but isn't it easier to just group the accidents, notifiable, major, minor, etc and then concentrate on reduction?

Jay: All of the companies adhereing to OGP Guidelines use the following equation: No. of injuries / hours worked X 1000000 So, assuming that the operation had 300 men who worked 12 hours per day for 365 days = 1,314,000 (which is not far from actual figures), there were 3 injuries throughout the reporting period, the AFR or LTIR would be 2.28. This is an industry standard calculation, and keeps everyone on an even keel. I would assume that there is a standard reporting process in your industry, so if your figures are high, and you have a good record, then most of your competitors would be high too. BTW, although we submit our figures, they are mainly used for target and goal setting to better our LTIR performace. We use the same calculation for automotive acidents / actual KM's driven X 1000000KM's driven, and Environment spill rate / actual diesel and oil used X 1000000 litres (oil and diesel) used. Hope this helps you understand, and how other industries report.

One of the problems in this area is that it is nearly all OSH people talking to themselves, as no one in line management has a clue what these numbers mean - mainly because very few organisations today count actual worked hours, whereas when these numbers began most workers were in factories and clocked on and off. HSE stopped publishing data based on hours years ago - their typical annual injury rates are quoted per 100,000 full-time employees. That's possibly of some use for national statistics, but very few organisations have these sorts of numbers. However, the good thing is that most of the resulting numbers are in the high 100s or low 1000s - so you can just divide by 1000 and get the rate per 100 employees. Most line managers, etc. can visualise what an organisation of 100 people is like, and an injury rate around 1.0 is typical (remember HSE only get told about injuries resulting in lost time or worse, so don't confuse it with an in-house rate based on more minor injuries, which you should also be counting). The best organisations have LTI rates much lower than 1 per 100 per year. The other good thing about using rate per hundred people is that they work about 200,000 hours per year. Typical US injury rates are calculated per 200,000 hours, so you can also compare with anything you find from a US-based company, including their listed rates for less serious injuries (OSHA regulations require employers to count other types and report these annually as well). Traditionally UK injury rates were/are calculated per 100,000 hours, which is roughly what someone works in a lifetime (50 years x 2000 hours). Hope all this helps. IOSH recommends using the rate per 100 people, so it means something to non-specials as well as allowing benchmarking.