Safety Pays in Mining: User’s Guide

This User's Guide provides step-by-step instructions on how to use Safety Pays in Mining.

Version: 1.2

Most Common Injuries and Work Activities for 2015

This section displays summary tables of the most common injuries and work activities performed when an injury occurred. From the Commodity drop down menu, select the commodity for which you would like to see the common injuries and mine worker activities. The commodity selected also selects default data used later in Safety Pays in Mining.

What Is the Cost of Occupational Injury?

This section calculates the cost of occupational injury to your company. Direct and indirect costs are calculated for each injury by nature or injury by cause that you select. To generate the Cost Report, complete the following steps:

1. Injury by Nature or Injury by Cause buttons: Select the radio button for the costs you would like to see: For types of injuries, select Injury by Nature. For events or exposures leading to injury, select Injury by Cause.
2. Injury by Nature or Injury by Cause drop down: From the drop-down menu, select the injury that is of interest.
3. Number of injuries: Enter the number of injuries—from 1 to 99—of this type at your company, or accept the default value of 1.
4. Select the median, percentile, or mean cost ($): Enter the estimated amount your company paid for medical expenses and indemnity (direct) costs for an injury of this type, or select from the presented mean or cost percentiles associated with this injury by clicking the value.
5. Click Add to include the information above in all reports.
6. Repeat this process for any additional injury types.
7. If you make a mistake, you can click Remove to eliminate a row from the report, or you can edit by clicking in the row.
8. When you have completed entering all of your injury information, move to the next section to learn more about the impact of occupational injury on your company.

What Is the Impact of the Cost of Occupational Injury on Your Company?

This section calculates the impact of occupational injury on your company's profitability. The Impact Report will only provide information about the injuries you selected in the first section and that are included in the Cost Report. To generate the Impact Report, complete the following steps:

1. If you cannot see the table, click Show  to begin work on this section. (Conversely, click Hide to collapse the section.)
2. Profit margin (%): Enter your company's profit margin, or accept the default value of 5.5%.
3. Annual sales ($): Enter your company's annual sales total, or accept the default value of the average annual sales total for companies in the U.S. with at least 250 people and at least two establishments that mine the same commodity as your company.
4. Injury types: To see the impact of a particular injury type, or to see the impact of all injuries, check the appropriate corresponding box.
5. When you have calculated the impacts for all injury types of interest and the Impact Report is complete, move to the next section to learn about how your company can use money saved by preventing injuries.

How Could Your Company Spend Its Savings from Preventing Injury?

This section demonstrates how your company could spend savings by preventing occupational injury. The Savings Report will only provide information about the injuries you selected in the first section and that are included in the Cost Report. To generate the Savings Report, complete the following steps:

1. If you cannot see the table, click Show to begin work on this section. (Conversely, click Hide to collapse the section.)
2. Hourly wage ($): Enter your company's hourly wage for the type of new employee you might hire with money saved, or accept the default value. The default hourly wage values are as follows for each commodity: all mining (except oil and gas extraction) is $25 per hour, coal is $26, metal is $28, and nonmetal and stone, sand & gravel is $22.
3. Yearly cost of a hearing loss prevention program per employee ($): Enter the average amount your company pays annually for a hearing loss prevention program for one employee, or accept the default value of $375.
4. Cost of a pair of MSHA-suitable safety boots ($): Enter the average amount your company pays for a pair of safety boots, or accept the default value of $175 per pair.
5. Cost of an MSHA-suitable hard hat ($): Enter the average amount your company pays for a hard hat, or accept the default value of $60.
6. Injury types: To see how you could spend the savings from preventing a particular injury type, or to see how you could spend the savings from preventing all injuries, check the appropriate corresponding box.

Finishing the Reports

• Click Print to print all four reports.
• To erase all of the data entered, click Clear. If you wish to make changes to these reports without starting over, you can select additional injuries (in the second section) as well as enter new or replace existing data in all four sections.
• To save the results, copy and paste the reports into an Excel or Word file.

For additional information on data and calculations used in Safety Pays in Mining, see the Technical Guide.