TRIR/DART for companies of less than 100 employees
Are these calculations beneficial for small companies? We have had 4 or less recordables for the past 5 years but that doesn't equal to a "low" rate. We are happy with how far we have come with decreasing injuries (26 in 2014). But I want to show the success with a rate but if I show that we are still in the moderate range that could be discouraging.
Comments (9)
Try a total incident rate and some severity measure alongside it. May want to smooth it out by applying some rolling cadence.
Comparing your company to BLS industry data sets can be very misleading. I wouldn’t put stock there.
Correct. TRIR and DART rates are disproportionate for employers with <100 employees. With that being said, be sure you're comparing it to the most recent BLS national average for your NAICS code.
As Jed mentioned, severity rate is a good indicator, but I would check the BLS average and compare. Nonetheless, if you've went from 26 to 4 in a matter of 8 years, just show the year-over-year comparisons.
I only run these numbers a couple times per year. It’s for insurance and for the few that are covered by OSHA with the 300 logs. TRIR ratios don’t tell anything about the story. How many hours of training are employees involved in per year? How many documented inspections are completed per month, man day, or man hour? How many action items are closed <2, 5, 15, 30 days? Safety observations of specific tasks, JSA’s written, reviewed, edited, successful loto sequences performed, successful hot work, and confined space permits executed per man day.
Everyone puts stock in these dad-gum ratios. Why? If you don’t have the man hours to make these ratios 1/2 or 1/3 of your competitors, then do yourself a favor and tell a better story. The narrative is yours. Use it to highlight your teams accomplishments.
By the way, I sincerely hope to provide a tool to the profession in the near future to analyze performance in a way not yet established to my knowledge. I'll be publishing my work on a risk methodology that attacks the problem this post is describing. Can't wait to get my research to peer review!!!
I was forced to use "rates" all the time in the Corporate World. My plant had 400 employees and the major metric corporate wide (300 locations in North America) was the OSHA Recordable Rate. We never used the terms TIR and DART in the my corporate world. I had to look those terms up when I joined the Consulting World as my smaller companies use them, especially their WC Carriers. We were of course self-insured so did not have to worry about a Mod Rate either. We did have a WC ratio (metric) we called WC$/Labor Hours Worked which we were graded on like the OSHA Rec Rate. Our Corporate goal for WC was >$.05 and hour/ If it got to $.10 you got help from Corporate and believe me YOU DID NOT WANT HELP! Our major OSHA Rec Rate was >1.0 Lost Time .5, or you could get help. When I was first handed the Safety Role we were at $.395 per hour and had an OSHA Rec Rate of 19.5. I forgot the LTA but it was not good either! When I retired we were at $.02 with a Rec Rate of .5 (meaning we had 2 recordables with 400 employees). I got lots more help than I ever wanted and none of it was fun! I grew to dread Corp EHS audits and would much rather have an OSHA visit!
Lost Times were are major Safety Metric for a long time. But we all learned to play the game! The trick and goal was to pay someone at least a few minutes every day for work after and injury so that they could not miss and "entire shift of work!" I had all the local doctors to send people back into the plant for at least .5 hour after the accident to at least ask questions about the accident. One of my peers would send a sack of safety videos to an an injured employee's home and pay them for watching "training videos". I thought that was a bridge to far, but I did send a taxi to an employee's home twice a day to pick up and deliver an employee to work every day for 4 hours, 100 miles round trip for 3 months. When she was at work she counted paper clips. So we played the game! So numbers can be played with!
I use these to evaluate sub contractors. Before we use them we have to vet them and their safety record is a part of the vetting process. Of course the numbers are not always going to be the disqualifier but can show they could be a risk to use. I am a Safety Manager for large government contract so the process can be pretty extensive at times. But we also try to use small businesses to perform work