Rank: Forum user
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Hi all.
I am finding it very difficult to work out accident frequency rates. there is absolutely no calculations online which actually show you the outcome of the calculation. I have read in the NEBOSH Diploma Unit A book that it is Number of accidents divided by Number of hours x 1,000,000:
For example - 8 Accidents Divided by 38,664 Hours worked x 1,000,000 = 206.91
That seems awful high to me and I dont want to submit this in a report if it is wrong. Is my calculation correct and is that the actual number I should be getting
Thank
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Rank: Super forum user
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Not sure if this is right but try dividing by 1,000,000 instead, that will give a more realistic total?
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Rank: Super forum user
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Accident frequency rates are only comparitors, nothing more. They are designed to allowe you to compare your accident rates to other companies or other industries. You may be part of a company for instance that has 6 sites each with different sized work forces. One site may employ 1000 people and another may employ 200. All things being equal you might expect the larger site to have 5 times as many accidents because of its larger workforce. Accident frequency rates allow you look at the number of accidents on a level playing field. It doesn't matter whether you use 1000000 as a multiple or 100000 as long as each site does the same. Using 1000000 as a multiple allows you to calculate how many accidents you are having per 1000000 hours worked. That is all it is, nothing more and nothing less.
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Rank: Forum user
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The publication 'Successful health and safety management' contains guidance on the incident and frequency rates which are used in respect of calculating statistics Calculation of injury incidence rates HSE's formula for calculating an annual injury incidence rate is: Number of reportable injuries in financial year ------------------------------------------------------------------- x 100 000 Average number employed during year This gives the rate per 100 000 employees. The formula makes no allowances for variations in part-time employment or overtime. It is an annual calculation and the figures need to be adjusted pro-rata if they cover a shorter period. Such shorter-term rates should be compared only with rates for exactly similar periods - not the national annual rates. Calculation of injury frequency rates While HSE calculates injury INCIDENCE RATES per 100 000 employees, some parts of industry prefer to calculate injury FREQUENCY RATES, usually per million hours worked. This method, by counting hours worked rather than the number of employees, avoids distortions which may be caused in the incidence rate calculations by part- and full-time employees and by overtime working. Frequency rates can be calculated for any time period. The calculation is: Number of injuries in the period ------------------------------------------------------ x 1 000 000 Total hours worked during the period Reference: HSG65 Successful health and safety management. http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/priced/hsg65.pdf Measures of workplace injury: Definitions and formulae can also be found on the HSE website at the following link: http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/lfs/injury.htm
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Rank: Super forum user
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Ryan, your calculation is spot-on. The whole point of multiplying by an arbitrary large number like 1,000,000 is to give you a familiarly-sized number instead of tiny one with lots of decimal places before the first significant figure that you get if you don't multiply by something large. It scales the rate to something that you can easily work with.
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Rank: New forum user
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On the same subject: I have calculated that in 2015 our accident rate was 10892. And what does it mean ? is it a lot ? or not ? I need to set a target for 2016 and not sure what shall I aim for ? I will be grateful for your advice
Evelina
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Rank: Super forum user
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Evelina Perminiene wrote:On the same subject: I have calculated that in 2015 our accident rate was 10892. And what does it mean ? is it a lot ? or not ? I need to set a target for 2016 and not sure what shall I aim for ? I will be grateful for your advice
Evelina That number does look very high. I would take a guess that your formula may be wrong. Are you using this - Number of reportable injuries x 100 000 divided by the totoal number of hours worked. E.g. lets take a random month where I work. 1 injury. 80000 hours. 1 x 100,000 divided by 80,000 = accident frequency rate of 1.25
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Rank: Super forum user
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Sorry I meant to say its the incidence rate not frequency rate.
If you are doing the other formula for frequency rate, remember to divide the number of accidents by the hours worked before x by 1000,000
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Rank: Super forum user
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Ryan,
Can I suggest you multiply by 100,000 rather than 1,000,000?
This would give you a more relevant rate of 20.69 accidents per 100,000 hours worked.
You could also halve this to 10.3 per 50,000 hours worked.
But to be honest, your 8 accidents, in whatever time period equates to your sum of 38,664 Hours worked, is harder hitting than working out frequency rates. For example:
"We had 8 accidents in the last year - that's equivalent to 2 accidents every quarter"
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Rank: Super forum user
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Its important to note 2 things: 1) This method was invented when most organisations counted hours worked, so they could pay people. It makes much less sense when hours aren't counted for another reason - why is the counting effort needed to produce a statistic that few understand anyway? Why do you think HSE now quote rates per numbers of workers, not hours? (Most organisations DO know how many FTEs (full time equivalents) they employ). 2) The resulting numbers should be helpful for directors and managers. The IOSH guide to reporting recommends quoting injury rates per 100 people, as most of us can 'see' what a group that size looks like. It's exactly the same process as HSE use, but the result is 1000x smaller - and if you look at the HSE data, most of it is in the high hundreds and thousands and, unless you are used to managing very large sporting events, who knows what 100,000 people look like? Also, very roughly, 100 people work about 200,000 hours a year, which is what all US injury rates are based on, so you can compare with others if you wish.
Hope this helps!
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Rank: Super forum user
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AFR, 100,000 – a arbitrary, abstract number. But it isn’t. It isn’t selected just because it’s a big, round number. It’s used because it’s a round number which roughly equates to the number of hours we put in on average in a working lifetime
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Rank: Forum user
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Walker is spot on in want he says about the reason for using 100,000 hours. It can be summarized is such a way that if your frequency rate is 0.50 then all things being equal half of your workforce would have an accident at some point in their working life if they worked for you for all of that time.
I'm the SHE Performance Manager for a FTSE 100 company and we use various measures to benchmark against peers and also with our own business units.
LTA/100k work hours is the one we use the most and as we have a F/T and P/T workforce this works best for us but the most important thing is to make sure you are using a system that suits your business activities and size.
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Rank: Super forum user
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