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 2.0

Most Common Injuries and Work Activities for 2022

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 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 selected injury. To generate the Cost Report, complete the following steps:

1. Injury Category buttons: Select the radio button for the injury costs you would like to see: Select from Part of body injured to see the part of body directly affected, Nature of injury for the principal physical characteristics of injury, Cause of injury for the manner in which the injury was produced, or Part/nature/cause combinations for selected combinations of the previous injury categories.
2. Injury drop down: From the drop-down menu, select the injury that is of interest.
3. Number of injuries: Enter the number of injuries of this type at your company or accept the default value of one.
4. Select the direct cost ($): Select from the presented average (mean), median, or various cost percentiles associated with this injury by clicking the value in the green box. Some claims are presented by medical only (less severe) or lost time (more severe) to give a better idea of what costs could be. You also may enter the estimated amount your company paid for medical expenses and indemnity costs for an injury of this type.

5. Repeat this process for any additional injury types.
6. If you make a mistake, you can click Remove (red button) to eliminate a row from the report, or you can edit by clicking the gold button.
7. 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 table generated (Impact Table) 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 Table, complete the following steps:

1. Profit margin (%): Enter your company's profit margin or accept the default value of 11.7%.
2. 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.
3. When you have calculated the impacts for all injury types of interest and the Impact Table 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 Table 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 Table, complete the following steps:

1. 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 $27 per hour, coal is $32, metal is $33, and nonmetal and stone, sand & gravel is $25.
2. Yearly cost of a hearing loss prevention program per employee ($): Enter the average amount your company pays annually for a hearing loss prevention program for one employee, or accept the default value of $300.
3. Cost of a pair of MSHA-suitable safety boots ($): Enter the average amount your company pays for a pair of safety boots or accept the default value of $175 per pair.
4. Cost of an MSHA-suitable hard hat ($): Enter the average amount your company pays for a hard hat, or accept the default value of $60.

Finishing the Reports

• Click Print to print all four tables.
• 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.

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

---