Firms registered for the voluntary COR program experienced substantial reduction in their time loss injury rate (TLIR).
This is the second blog in a series on COR effectiveness. As we discussed in the first blog of this series, which you can find here, the study we did with the Saskatchewan Construction Safety Association (SCSA) sought to answer a number of questions. One of those questions was “how effective is COR on injury reduction (i.e. performance)?”.
In previous blog posts we have discussed how statistics such as TRIR/TRIF/MIR/LTIR are not the best measure of a company’s culture and performance. Though these measures don’t represent the whole picture of a particular company, they are very useful at statistical group level analysis, and this is what we used for the purposes of this study. After all, the ultimate goal is to reduce all incidents, including injuries.
Now, to the results!
Our study on more than 2700 firms operating in trades, residential and commercial/industrial construction in Saskatchewan during 2014 – 2019 showed that firms registered for the voluntary COR program experienced substantial reduction in their time loss injury rate (TLIR). The figure below shows how COR helps firms reduce their time loss injuries.
As shown in the figure, COR certified firms, on average, experienced 31% more reduction in their LTIR compared to their uncertified peers. Our analyses also showed that COR certified firms experienced about 25% reduction in NTL injury rates over three year after they became certified, but yet reported more NTL injuries compared to their uncertified peers. This is an indication of a distinct culture, both in safety awareness and reporting, which places these firms on the path to further reduction of serious injuries and fatalities.
When our analysis specifically looked into small firms (those with less than 12 employees) and matched those firms with the uncertified control group by payroll and business type (rate code), the impact of COR was significantly greater for small firms than large firms.
In the next blog in this series, we will discuss the impact of COR on small construction businesses.
Stay tuned!
Note: If you would like a copy of any of our white papers, please contact us – we are happy to share our results with you.
A growing body of evidence suggests that implementing COR in small Saskatchewan construction firms can reduce occurrence of all injures by up to 40%.
Using COR audit results and WCB claims data, we studied the effectiveness of the COR program in three subsectors.
On average, small firms are expected to have a 55% drop in the total compensation days per claim if they become COR-certified.