Injury Cost Calculator

Workplace injuries are estimated to cost the US economy $164.6 billion annually. Use the injury cost calculator below to estimate the costs of a workplace injury.

Workplace Injuries By The Numbers

Industry Incident Rate

Nursing and residential care facilities

10.7

Skiing facilities

9.9

Veterinary services

9.7

Motor home manufacturing

9.6

Materials recovery facilities

9.5

Wood container and pallet manufacturing

8.1

Manufactured home (mobile home) manufacturing

8

Iron foundries

7.8

Pet and pet supplies stores

7.8

Couriers and express delivery services

7.8

Hog and pig farming

7.7

Travel trailer and camper manufacturing

7.7

Psychiatric and substance abuse hospitals

7.6

Framing contractors

7.4

Hospitals

7.4

Used household and office goods moving

7.3

Correctional institutions

7.1

Beet sugar manufacturing

7

Roasted nuts and peanut butter manufacturing

7

Steel foundries (except investment)

7

Beef cattle ranching and farming, including feedlots

6.5

Truck trailer manufacturing

6.8

Truss manufacturing

6.5

Rendering and meat byproduct processing

6.4

Soft drink manufacturing

6.4

Top 25 NAICS by incidence rate per 100 workers. Source

Estimating Injury Costs

When estimating the costs of an injury, an organization must assess both direct and indirect costs. Additional revenue may also be calculated to consider the revenue required to compensate for the total costs of the injury. Use the injury calculator below to estimate costs and additional revenue. Select "enter cost" to enter a cost directly or click "Select Injury" to choose an injury and it's estimated costs.

Enter Cost
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In order to calculate costs manually follow the steps below.

Step 1) Calculate Direct Costs

Direct costs are the immediate costs of an injury such as emergency room, procedures, doctors visits, medical bills, medicince, and rehab. Such costs are typically covered by worker's compensation insurance. Click here to download a list of OSHA's injury direct cost estimates.

Step 2) Calculate Indirect Costs

Indirect costs are not typically covered by worker's compensation insurance. These include overtime pay coverage, decreased productivity, and damage to company moral and culture. OSHA's conservative estimate is $1.10 in indirect costs for every $1 of direct costs.

Step 3) Calculate Additional Revenue

Calculate the additional revenue required to compensate for the sum of the direct and indirect costs. Divide the total costs by the profit margin.

Keep in mind that 1.1 ratio for indirect costs is a conservative estimate. In some cases indirect costs may range as high as $4.50 per $1 in direct cost for severe injuries. These higher costs may also include repairs to damaged equipment or property, and the cascading impact of the injury on absenteeism and worker morale.

Consequently, the compensation from just one injury can put a sizeable burden on the entire organization, from additional administrative work, to sales, to rehiring.

formula for calculating injury costs

Assessing Your Safety Culture

Safety is difficult to quantify. A Total Recordable Incident Rate Calculator helps put some numbers to your workforce's safety culture. TRIR is an OSHA metric that calculates the number of recordable incidents per 100 people. Further assessment can include reviewing current policies, surveying employees' perception of the workplace.

Other techniques for measuring safety culture often involve interacting directly with supervisors and hourly workers.

Direct Observation can provide insight into employee attitudes and give a sense of daily operations. One key insight to observe is employee willingness to confront unsafe behavior. Observation works well in partenership with studies to confirm or contradict data points.

Interviews allow leadership to explore cultural issues that may not be apparent from observation or studies. However, overgeneralization of complex topics is easy to do, and employees selected should represent the borader workforce.

Focus Groups provide an efficient solution to diagnose issues. A skilled interviewer is essential to lead the group in a constructive and balanced conversation.

Surveys allow leadership to gain an overall sense of safety culture and the workers' perception of their environment. However, survey design is complicated and data can be easily skewed by poorly worded questions or low response rates.

Performance Indicator Tracking provides hard data on the overall state of the safety culture. Monitoring trends is a way to determine what initiatives are impactful, and where safety leaders should concentrate on training and awareness.

Reducing Workplace Injuries

OSHA cites injury and illness prevention programs as an effective way to reduce injuries and fatalities. An effectively implemented program can significantly improve the workplace health and safety environment. The benefits are far reaching, from increasing compliance to the financial benefits of reducing workers compensation.

All effective programs share the key elements of management leadership, worker participation, hazard identification and assessment, hazard prevention and control, education and training, and program evaluation and improvement. KPA Flex is a demonstrated safety platform that helps leaders reduce workplace hazards and develop a strong safety culture.