The most recent edition of PPHS, 10.1, was dedicated to Experience Rating in Worker Compensation. This has been a hot topic here in Ontario for the past several years. I am interested in hearing views from safety professionals about the use and value of experience ratings as injury prevention metric. The Ontario’s worker’s compensation agency, the WSIB (Workplace Safety Insurance Board), has long promoted experience ratings as an incentive program to prevent injury and demonstrate an effective safety management program. However, as noted in the PPHS the evidence is ambiguous at best.

PPHS is the IOSH Learned Journal - Policy & Practice in Health & Safety. The latest edition has research papers from several different jurisdictions, including Canada, all providing pretty convincing evidence that adjusting the compulsory levy that empoyers pay for workers compensation insurance based on their history of accident claims doesn't work very well, in particular for health issues. TSavage, you should be aware that UK (where the majority of Forum readers are) doesn't operate such a government/state system - employers have to use commercial insurers. That's not to say they don't also 'weight' premiums based on claims history, but there isn't just a single system, and employers can shop around. Also the UK work-related insurance sector is complex. There is wide use of brokers, so it's not just an employer-insurer relationship. Also different insurances are often bundled, so the workers compensation bit isn't standalone. I've not worked in the sector myself, nor ever had to deal with claims - but I have picked up the information above from experience as an OSH practitioner and am also aware of some key differences across national boundaries. No doubt someone more directly involved in insurance matters will correct me if any of the above is misleading. On a linked issue, a couple of weeks ago the US Chemical Safety Board had a 2-day public hearing on the issue of Measuring Safety Performance (linked to their Macondo blowout investigations). All the papers/presentations are on their website and all universally condemn using injuries as a measure of safety when major hazards are involved. The CSB presentation says they judge that the fixation on recognising and rewarding good LTI performance shown by most organisations in US Gulf of Mexico, including the regulator, was a root cause of the blowout! So Ontario WSIB might like to think hard about that when dealing with major hazards employers.