Man Hours. 

So what does your company expect?

If an employee is "on the books" then their contractual hours should continue to be used for calculations (just because they are not "in" the workplace does not mean you can exclude them otherwise firms would never account for mobile employees - service engineers, delivery drivers, sales reps etc.).

If for example you start to disregard furloughed employees in the UK then in any organsation this will add a significant skew to your metrics. Redundancy however does remove hours from calculations.

Lost hours due to accident or sickness would similarly accrue in the statistics.

Shielding is a separate case in most firms from sickness - the employee absence is for protection rather than recuperation and many employers have furloughed such staff rather than pace them on sick leave.

Determination of a working from home lost time accident under UK RIDDOR is an interesting and probably separate discussion given most home workers are on the phone / computer in a domestic environment the employer cannot control.

Hi shuvonkarpyne

I think firstly every company records accident/incident data differently with regards to statistics, especially when it comes to hours worked or frequencies, I'd like to think we all comply with RIDDOR and First Aid regs, so with regards worldwide and IOSH guidance probably nothing specific here.

I still collect hours worked as I present our accident data as frequency following OSHA model, as our parent company is US based. All our hours worked are on our time and management system including those working from home (and those offsite and travelling prior to COVID) and this is where I get my data. About 15% of our workforce are currently working from home.

I still require all accidents to be reported, and employees are aware of this. However those at home are at less risk and the severity should be significantly lower than those still in operational areas. I haven't received any accident reports, but I haven't in my 5 years at the company for this group of people, they do report near misses.

So in summary to answer your question; yes man hours feed into our frequency rate and yes if we had an accident whilst carrying out work activity at home it would appear in our stats. But this is down to each organisation to decide how they record the statistics.

Furloughed staff are "being paid" by HM Gov to be retained upon the payroll therefore they are still "on the books" and would count in all the usual metrics. Being furloughed they retain all rights and protections under continuity of employment as if they were "working" including accruing pension and holiday entitlement.

Someone at home pregnant, adopting, injured, sick or shielding is also not working - these people are on the payroll and do not get excluded from the metrics.

With the future changes to the furlough scheme they would be permitted to conduct part time tasks for their employer. To pro-rata the employee hours worked versus hours contracted makes for a very messy and complex calculation.

It is certainly an interesting debate as there will be no accident reports from furloughed staff so that will effect the KPI score. Not sure I am completely comfortable with that as it isn't a true reflection. However, for us it does not make a big differance as the numbers are low.

As you say, things will change going forward.

But the man hours of the furloughed are zero (unless they are working part time in which case you would count only the hours they were actually supposed to be working).

The furloughed are permitted to train in relation to their employers business.

They can also apply manhours work (employment contract permitting) for another employer whilst being paid under the furlough scheme by their first.

Some employers have allowed furloughed staff to use company vehicles for voluntary delivery activity.

All potential situations for non-domestic accidents and incidents to the furloughed employee.

This is a temporary and unusual situation where businesses have seen sales fall sometimes to zero which normally would have shut the company, resulted in staff redundancy and eliminate the need for any metrics.

The UK government Covid Job Retention Scheme grant pays for normal hours (not worked) it is therfore not "sharp practice" to keep calculating based upon the total employee hours available to the company disposal as all the employees were present pre-Covid and being furloughed are expected to be required after lockdown so for the short dip in site activity between they do exist.

When calculated rates rise because that single accident per month is now being measured against two hundred working employees rather than the thousand on payroll your explanation is?

Sharp practice would be to take credit for the sudden drop in the rate based upon a single accident per month being measured against the thousand employees who have returned to work.

Edited by user 02 June 2020 20:29:51(UTC)  | Reason: FFS

Is it working hours (contractual/attended) or hours worked (productive time resolving tasks)? With some employees (on-site, on the road, home working or furloughed) there can be a massive gulf between these two sets of figures which is where the OP came in.

I don't see why it would be anything other than hours attended.  

home

attendance 168h

contracted 40h

furloughed 40h

worked 0h

Originally Posted by: Roundtuit

home

attendance 168h

contracted 40h

furloughed 40h

worked 0h

I'm seeing this example as 0 hours added to the denominator. If the person on furlough sustained an injury whilst undertaking any recreational or domestic activity would that event be included in the stats (numerator) for your overall rate calcs?

I haven't untangled every nuance of this thread, but it seems to me to be a relatively simple matter, and I'm not sure why there is any confusion:

People furloughed are not 'at work'.  So if they are not at work the hours they would have been at work in an alternate reality where coronavirus didn't happen don't appear in the hours figure used for incident rates. 

If you want to count 'productive time resolving tasks' what on earth did you do pre-coronavirus about all the people swinging the lead during the working day on the premises?  I'm certain that not 100% of the employees are 100% productive all the time they are sat at desks in the office, let alone huddled in the  kitchens.  What did you do about people that might have been thinking about work at the weekend?

I would say obviously someone that has an accident while they are not working doesn't go in the stats - the accident doesn't go in the stats, the hours they weren't working don't go in the stats.  Pre-furlough I certainly didn't include injuries they self-inflicted while on holiday in the stats, even if they did them between 9-5 M-F and would normally have been working.

Surely all time is divided into working time and not-working time.  Working time is used in the accident rate stats.  Not-working time does not. Furloghed staff are not working, by definition.  All their time is not-working time.

The government guidance says:

"When your employees are on furlough you cannot ask your employee to do any work that: makes money for your organisation or any organisation linked or associated with your organisation, provides services for your organisation or any organisation linked or associated with your organisation.

"Your employee can: take part in training, volunteer for another employer or organisation"

So they are not working, cannot be working, and their hours are not worked hours.  The only possible wrinkle would be that you might quibble about whether to add in training hours to the stats.  Personally I would, since they are doing something that they've been told to do (presumably).

What is the difficulty?  I don't understand why this is an issue.

Originally Posted by: Kim Hedges

Can one do overtime at home?

Why not?  If you're contracted to work 8 hours a day and you work at home for 9 hours, what would you call it?

Some/many of our employees are doing (and logging) overtime, though we're not paying for it at the moment.  Even where we don't pay overtime, my view is that people should log the hours they work.

Edited by user 04 June 2020 21:13:51(UTC)  | Reason: spelling