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Cristina  
#1 Posted : 26 June 2019 10:58:45(UTC)
Rank: New forum user
Cristina

I have been asked to report our number of accident/incident stats as a % of employees. However i have two questions;

1 - with a workforce made up of say 400 employees, and 350 'workers' i.e. Zero-hour contract workers but who are on payroll should they be included in the total 'employees'. I.E OUT OF 750 OR OUT OF 400. Of course we would log any incidents they had a include them in our number of accidents, but do they class as 'employees' or would you log their accident as 'contractor'.

2 - Accidents within our building (we are landlord) to tenants, visitors, public, would all be logged too, would they also need to be included in the stat 'accidetn rate by % of employees? If so it would seem to me this would not present useful data?

Sorry if i have not explained myself here. Any ideas? The Zero hour contract subject is still very grey.

How do you present your accident totals. By volume alone, or by % of workforce? or other. 

Thank you 

hilary  
#2 Posted : 26 June 2019 11:06:23(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
hilary

On the basis that zero hour employees are entitled to SSP, then yes, include them in your accident statistics.

No, visitors, sub-contractors, etc are not employees and while you have to include them for RIDDOR they should not be part of your stats unless they are agency employees and working as employees for you.

We present our accidents using the normal formula which works it out by number of accidents x 200,000 divided by total number of hours worked for all staff ytd.

Cristina  
#3 Posted : 26 June 2019 12:32:02(UTC)
Rank: New forum user
Cristina

Hi. Our 'workers' so not recieve SSP. As such do I remove them from our reporting stats?

Also do you know what the correct way is to report accident rates. I have read your suggestion re 200,000 but then read some of the IOSH forums which say an array of different ways?

fairlieg  
#4 Posted : 26 June 2019 13:30:37(UTC)
Rank: Forum user
fairlieg

Originally Posted by: Cristina Go to Quoted Post

Hi. Our 'workers' so not recieve SSP. As such do I remove them from our reporting stats?

Also do you know what the correct way is to report accident rates. I have read your suggestion re 200,000 but then read some of the IOSH forums which say an array of different ways?

They should all count also SSP is payable if they are earning over the lower earnings limit

And its up to you how you present your rates the above is what we do

imwaldra  
#5 Posted : 26 June 2019 13:59:21(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
imwaldra

Calculating accident rates by hours worked doesn't make much sense unless:

  • The organisation already has a system for recording hours worked, for other reasons. If you do it just to create the safety data, that's unlikely to be effeicient use of resources. An alternative is to assume an average number of hours worked per year by one person (see below), but if all you are doing is counting the equivalent number of full-time people, why not provide the data 'per so many people'?
  • The people for whom the data is intended understand what something like 200,000 hours 'looks like' in terms of people (it's very roughly the hours worked in a year by 1000 people). But in many organisations 1000 people at one site would never happen. For many line managers, 100 people is perhaps the largest group they could visualise?

So, why not quote the data 'per 100 people/year? Your organisation obviously has systems for knowing how many people it has - though those with zero hours contracts are a challenge. Is there data that could turn their hours worked into 'full-time equivalent people' for each time period? Very often, it's the contractors employed who are more at risk than the employees. So it's definitly worth publishing the two sets of data. If the number of injuries to other on your premises (visitors, public, etc.) is significant, then publish that data separately, as it can only be a total because you'll have no idea of their numbers. If such injuries are rare, as is probably more likely, then just include them in the employees + contractors total.

Someone may argue that you can't compare yourself with other organisations if you don't 'standardise' by using data per 200,000 hours. My response would be:

  • Most of the time the data will be used for internal comparisons, not external.
  • If you quote it per 100 people, then all you have to do is multipy your numbers by 10, and you can compar it to typical US data (beware because many UK-only organisations often use rates per 100,000, not 200,000!).
  • HSE publish their industry sector data per 100,000 employees (ie. no hours worked calculations at all!), so all you have to do is divide that by 1000 to compare with your data.
Roundtuit  
#6 Posted : 26 June 2019 18:47:12(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
Roundtuit

100,000 hours is an assumed working life 50 weeks, 40 hours per week for 50 years so an accident rate over working life - not that anyone can start work at 15, retire at 65 or have two weeks away from work any more . In the early days you could assume each FTE employee was 40 hours per week, and for most 48 weeks was a standard working year so simple maths Change the situation for longer / shorter standard weeks, overtime working (good tracker for picking up fatigue related incidents), additional days holiday based on service and suddenly the calculation is a bit more complex - plus you need to assign the accident in the correct category Day worker 40 hours, engineer 37.5 hours, MD as and when they bother with their inverse zero hours (more time at site lower hourly rate equivalent)

Edited by user 26 June 2019 18:49:24(UTC)  | Reason: FFS

Roundtuit  
#7 Posted : 26 June 2019 18:47:12(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
Roundtuit

100,000 hours is an assumed working life 50 weeks, 40 hours per week for 50 years so an accident rate over working life - not that anyone can start work at 15, retire at 65 or have two weeks away from work any more . In the early days you could assume each FTE employee was 40 hours per week, and for most 48 weeks was a standard working year so simple maths Change the situation for longer / shorter standard weeks, overtime working (good tracker for picking up fatigue related incidents), additional days holiday based on service and suddenly the calculation is a bit more complex - plus you need to assign the accident in the correct category Day worker 40 hours, engineer 37.5 hours, MD as and when they bother with their inverse zero hours (more time at site lower hourly rate equivalent)

Edited by user 26 June 2019 18:49:24(UTC)  | Reason: FFS

achrn  
#8 Posted : 27 June 2019 11:32:55(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
achrn

Originally Posted by: imwaldra Go to Quoted Post
already has a system for recording hours worked, for other reasons. If you do it just to create the safety data, that's unlikely to be effeicient use of resources.

I'm curious about this.  Does any company not have a means of recording hours worked?  I note in particular the question was specifically about zero hours contracts - how do you decide how much to pay someone on a zero hours contract if you have no record of the hours they worked?

With respect to the original question, I think accidents to the people on zero hours contracts should be included, and the hours worked by the zero hours people should be included.  To do otherwise sends the strong message that crippling people on zero hours contracts is fine, as long as you don't harm any 'employees'.

I observe that HSE stats are generally rates per worker, not per employee-with-a-proper-contract.

The stats we report are per worker in our business, and do not distinguish between our own full-time employees, contract staff or staff seconded to us (we have no zero-hour contracts).

If you then want to convert that per hour worked rate to a rate per FTE person (because someone wants rate per person not per hour worked), then fine, but otherwise it looks like attempted sleight-of-hand to me.

Edited by user 27 June 2019 11:34:44(UTC)  | Reason: spelling

Cristina  
#9 Posted : 04 July 2019 14:26:10(UTC)
Rank: New forum user
Cristina

Thank you all.

Our Zero hours workers are paid a rate based on unit completion rather than by the hour. We do not have hours worked info for them. This is why it is going to be difficult to try and track thid data down. They may complete 100 units in one go say in a week or they may do them as and when they get time so could be a month. They get paid by unit for this reason.

Hope this makes sense?

I have ended up using this calculation;

No of incidents in period / No of FTE Employees x 100

this gives me a %. So it came out with 0.74 monthly incidents per employee. 

Is this an acceptable way of calculating incident rate? I found the result sof the other calculations really didnt mean anything. 

Roundtuit  
#10 Posted : 04 July 2019 15:28:15(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
Roundtuit

Those of us closer to retirement call this "piece work" (zero hours is a contract for an hourly rate without set or agreed working hours). Whilst it is not paid by the hour an employer will know how long it will take a skilled worker to produce one piece and have a determination of the number of pieces required in a day/week or month - this then gives a simle calculation for standard attendance hours in such workers.

Roundtuit  
#11 Posted : 04 July 2019 15:28:15(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
Roundtuit

Those of us closer to retirement call this "piece work" (zero hours is a contract for an hourly rate without set or agreed working hours). Whilst it is not paid by the hour an employer will know how long it will take a skilled worker to produce one piece and have a determination of the number of pieces required in a day/week or month - this then gives a simle calculation for standard attendance hours in such workers.

johnmurray  
#12 Posted : 05 July 2019 16:43:23(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
johnmurray

Originally Posted by: Cristina Go to Quoted Post
Thank you all.Our Zero hours workers are paid a rate based onunit completionrather than by the hour. We do not have hours worked info for them. This is why it is going to be difficult to try and track thid data down. They may complete 100 units in one go say in a week or they may do them as and when they get time so could be a month. They get paid by unit for this reason. Hope this makes sense? I have ended up using this calculation;No of incidents in period / No of FTE Employees x 100 this gives me a %. So it came out with 0.74 monthly incidents per employee. Is this an acceptable way of calculating incident rate? I found the result sof the other calculations really didnt mean anything.
ACAS has already presented a way for you to calculate the minimum wage for " zero-hours-contract" or "piecework" employees.... http://m.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=4758 Knock yourself out. You can use it to see if you are paying the right wage while you're calculating if you can under measure the accident rate.
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