What Does Accident Rate Mean?
Accident rate is an indicator of the state of health and safety at work place. It provides an outline for measuring the degree to which the workers are protected from work related hazards at their work place.
Occupational safety and health administration (OSHA) provides a simple mathematical calculation to determine the accident rate:
Accident rate = (Number of accidents X 200,000) / Number of total employee work hours
An accident rate is also known as incidence rate.
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Safeopedia Explains Accident Rate
Accident rate data is used by governments, organizations and other stakeholders to formulate policies and programs for the prevention and reduction of occupational injuries, diseases and deaths. These are also used for monitoring the level of compliance and how programs are implemented in a particular industry, area occupation or location etc..
An accident rate is calculated by multiplying the number of recorded incidents by 200,000, and then dividing that number by the number of work hours in the organization. It is notable that the smaller organizations with small number of workers, but elevated numbers of incidents will have high accident rates and will highly fluctuate when compared year to year. Calculations are more significant at bigger organizations.
