What Does
Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate Mean?
Total recordable injury frequency rate (TRIFR) is a metric used to gauge an organization’s safety performance. It reflects the number of fatalities, lost time injuries, substitute work, and injuries requiring treatment by a medical professional per million hours worked.
TRIFR is a lagging indicator of safety, meaning that it reflects an organization’s past safety performance and may not be a solid basis for predicting its future incident rate.
Total recordable injury frequency rate is sometimes known simply as the total recordable injury rate (TRIR).
Safeopedia Explains Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate
Total recordable injury frequency rate should not be confused with the similarly named lost time injury frequency rate (LTIFR). The latter counts only fatalities and lost time injuries, not the other types of injuries that are reflected in the TRIFR.
Calculating TRIFR
This formula is used to calculate an organization’s TRIFR:
TRIFR = {(LTI + MTI + RWI) x 1,00,000} / Hours Worked
Were,
LTI is a Lost Time Injury (a work-related injury resulting in the loss of one or more complete workdays/shifts).
MTI is Medical Treatment Injury (a work-related injury that requires treatment by a medical practitioner beyond first aid).
RWI or Restricted Work Injury is (a work-related injury that results in the employee being unable to perform one or more of their normal duties on the next workday or shift).
Drawbacks of Using TRIFR
A low TRIFR is desirable for organizations as it projects an image of a safe workplace while also helping them evade the close scrutiny of regulatory authorities. Unfortunately, this incentivized companies to downplay incidents and discourage them or their employees from reporting minor injuries.
Inaccurate safety data neither helps organizations nor benefits their employees. To be a genuinely useful measure of safety performance, there must be no incentives or targets tied to TRIFR and the data should be used to identify safety issues rather than blame or punish workers.
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