What the study does, he recently told National Underwriter, is to “help us understand where to focus our attention, because 10 causes of loss are accounting for about 90 percent of the $42.5 billion.” Mr. Jacobson added that the top three causes of loss account for nearly half that amount.

Mr. Jacobson said there has been a steady decline in injuries for approximately 15 years, which he attributed to an increase in safety awareness. The decline, he added, is driven by cost, regulation and employer concern for worker safety.

“What we would like to see happen is the business community stand up and take notice of these trends,” he said. “If we just focus in on those few causes of loss, we might be able to make some progress.”

The survey information can also help businesses learn what problems others in their industry are facing. Some industry-specific high severity injuries can be minimized with planning, he said.

One example is an injury seen by contractorswhen an employee is caught in a trench cave-in. “A contractor needs to look at confined spaces and exposure to trench cave-ins, he said, “even though they may have never had an incident.”

He said he hopes the survey will get the business community interested in their causes of loss and put processes in place “to understand who is being injured, what they are doing when they are injured, where they are injured, and get to the root cause analysis of injuries in the workplace.”

It's important, he noted, for businesses to enlist the participation of employees. “The workforce has a lot of understanding of what's going on in the work environment if you just harness it,” he said. “With a facilitated process, they can identify and solve the problems.”

Mr. Jacobson said that Liberty Mutual performs a similar loss analysis profile for its customers every year and subsequently sets out a service plan.

Although every company's loss profile is slightly different, he said findings show that “in most industries, the major cause of loss is overexertion from manually lifting, pushing, pulling and carrying goods.”

The study found that the top three injury causes were responsible for 51 percent of the direct costs in 2000, up from 46 percent in 1998.

The three leading causes of work-related injuries grew at rates substantially higher than inflation. They were:

Overexertion, which grew 12 percent after adjustment for inflation.
Falls to same level, which rose 17 percent after adjustment for inflation.
Bodily reaction, which grew 13 percent after adjustment for inflation.

The study also found that a small percentage of workers' comp claims continue to be responsible for most of the direct costs. In 2000, disabling workplace incidents comprised 18 percent of workers' comp claims, but 93 percent of direct costs.

This is the third year the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety has developed the “Workplace Safety Index.”

This year, according to the company, the index calculated the inflation-adjusted growth in direct costs by using the Consumer Price Index to measure wage payments to injured workers and the Medical Care component to track work-related medical care expenses.

According to the company, a “disabling” incident results in an employee missing work for six or more days. The “direct cost” of a workplace incident consists of medical and lost wage payments to injured workers and their health care providers.

The full results of the survey can be found at www.libertymutual.com.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, May 12, 2003. Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved. Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.