How to actually lower your injury rate

This is the page people arrive at after working out their number and not liking it. The honest version is less satisfying than the poster version and it is the one that works.

Start by making sure the number is real

Before changing anything about the work, check that your rate is accurate, because a large share of bad rates are arithmetic rather than injuries.

Are first aid cases in your recordable count? This is the big one. The recordable definition is the most common error in the whole topic, and it always runs in the same direction. A company logging every bandage as recordable can report a rate several times higher than it earned.

Are your hours right? Under reported hours inflate the rate just as effectively as over reported injuries, and hours are the bigger number. Overtime, working owners, supervisors and office staff all count.

Is your DART above your TRIF? Then something is in the wrong bucket, because every DART case is also a recordable.

Correcting a genuine error is not manipulation. Applying a test you invented after seeing the result is. The distinction is whether you can state the rule you used and show that you used it the same way on every case, including the ones where it went against you.

Then find the jobs that keep producing claims

Here is the part that actually reduces harm.

Pull your last three years of incidents and sort them by the task being performed, not by injury type or body part. The standard categories tell you people hurt their backs and hands, which you knew. Sorting by task tells you which job keeps hurting people, and that is something you can change.

Most companies find that a small number of tasks account for a large share of claims. Loading and unloading. One particular piece of equipment. The same awkward lift in the same confined spot. Once you can name the task, you have something to fix, and you can point a formal hazard assessment at the job that has actually been costing you rather than at the whole company.

Modified work, and what it does and does not do

Real modified work is worth running. It gets injured workers back among their crew, it shortens recovery, and it reduces claim costs, which is what your provincial board actually experience rates you on.

It does not lower your TRIF and it does not lower your DART. Restricted duty is recordable and it is one of the three DART triggers. What it does is keep the case out of your lost time rate.

For it to work it has to be real. A genuine task, within the medical restrictions, that somebody would otherwise be doing. Inventing a job that consists of sitting in the lunch trailer is transparent to the worker, the crew and eventually the board, and it teaches everyone that the program is theatre.

What actively makes it worse

Two things, both well intentioned, both reliably counterproductive.

Injury free incentives. Paying a crew for a clean quarter puts a price on reporting. The worker with a sore shoulder now has a reason to stay quiet and their coworkers have a reason to encourage it. You lose the near miss and first aid reporting that would have shown you the problem, and the serious injury still arrives, just with no warning attached. If you want to incentivise something, incentivise reporting and participation.

Pressure on the clinic. Asking a treating practitioner to keep a case at first aid, or sending workers to a clinic known to be accommodating, is the point at which this becomes dishonest rather than merely optimistic. It also risks the worker's actual recovery. It is not worth a decimal place.

Be realistic about the timeline

Prequalification platforms read three years. A change made today affects this year's figure, which enters a rolling average that already contains two years you cannot change.

So the answer to "how do we lower our rate before this bid" is usually that you do not. What you can do before a bid is make sure the number is accurate, and prepare the explanation, which carries more weight than people expect. A specific account of what happened and what changed, with dates and documents, is a genuinely persuasive thing to put in front of a reviewer.

The rate itself follows the work, at the speed the work changes.

Free templates

The hazard assessment worksheet, pointed at the task rather than at the company.

Print ready PDF and editable DOCX, no email required, and the full library has the rest. If you would rather have somebody find the pattern and write the program around it, that is the paid work, and the software that holds it is free either way.

Related

• Safety metrics and injury rates is the hub.
• What counts as a recordable injury is where most inflated rates come from.
• What TRIF clients actually require covers what to do when you are above a threshold.
• Incident and near miss reporting is the system that finds the pattern.
• Hazard assessments is where the fix gets written down.