September 28, 2005—While risk managers, safety directors, and senior financial executives have cut the number of the most serious workplace injuries, those accidents continue to hit the bottom-line of employers hard, according to two Liberty Mutual studies announced at the National Safety Council’s World Safety Congress and Expo.
The rate of growth in the cost of these injuries slowed significantly: to 0.7% in 2003 from 6.5% in 2002, after adjusting for inflation. But the sheer size of the financial impact of workplace injuries remains. In fact, employers spent $50.8 billion in 2003 on wage payments and medical care for workers hurt on the job, and the total cost of workplace injuries grew almost $1 billion per year between 1998 and 2003, when adjusted for inflation.
The sixth annual Liberty Mutual Workplace Safety Index uncovers trends in the leading causes of the most serious workplace injuries between 1998 and 2003. In addition, the Liberty Mutual Chief Financial Officer Survey offers a glimpse of how senior financial executives at large and mid-size companies view safety.
Positive trends from the surveys include:
- A slowing of the rate of growth in the cost of serious workplace injuries, driven by a sharp decline in the number of such accidents, which fell 6.2% in 2003, almost half the total 13.5% decline over five years.
- The real cost of two of the top five causes of serious workplace injuries fell sharply between 2002 and 2003: the cost of Bodily Reaction dropped 4.7%, driven by an 11.6% decline in the number of these accidents, and the cost of Struck by Object fell 3.4% due to a 12.5% decline in the number of these injuries.
- Senior financial executives clearly see the value of workplace safety: over 60% of those surveyed report that each $1 invested in injury prevention returns $2 or more.
The top 10 workplace injuries in 2003, according to the Liberty Mutual Workplace Safety Index, were again: Overexertion (26.4%, at a cost of $13.4 billion), Falls on Same Level (13.7%, at $6.9 billion), Bodily Reaction (10.2%, at $5.1 billion), Falls to Lower Level (9.0%, at $4.6 billion), Struck by Object (8.5%, at $4.3 billion), Repetitive Motion (5.9%, at $3.0 billion), Highway Incidents (5.8%, at $3.0 billion), Struck against Object (4.4%, at $2.2 billion), Caught in or Compressed by (3.9%, at $2.0 billion), Assaults & Violent Acts (0.8%, at $0.4 billion), and All Other (11.3%, at $5.8 billion).
Liberty Mutual advises companies to “Know your business and manage it,” and to continue to build partnerships between risk managers, safety directors, and senior financial executives. Better training is important, but Liberty Mutual cites the need for a comprehensive safety management system that includes strong safety organization, management leadership, and employee participation. This approach is the core of a new American National Standards Institute standard – ANSI Z10 – due later this fall.
Findings from both studies can be found at Liberty Mutual.
