Incident Cost Scenario Calculator

How to interpret the result

This is arithmetic on your assumptions, not a prediction. The OSHA Safety Pays background describes a separate historical model whose indirect costs already include lost productivity; this calculator does not reproduce that model.

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Ask vendors to demonstrate reporting, investigation, action ownership and closure against your requirements. A software purchase does not establish an incident-reduction percentage.

What the formula includes and excludes

The calculator multiplies the incident count by the direct cost to get the direct total, multiplies the count by the additional cost to get the additional total, and adds the two. Nothing else enters. There is no injury-severity average, indirect-cost multiplier, productivity charge, insurance recovery, tax effect, discounting or prevention percentage. A result appears only when all three fields are filled, the count is a whole number up to one million, each per-incident amount is zero or more, and the total stays within one trillion dollars.

The dollar sign is a label. If you enter amounts in another currency, the total is in that currency and nothing is converted.

Assumptions and their limits

The first assumption is that one representative cost describes every incident in the count. A near miss, a first-aid case and a lost-time injury rarely cost the same, so a single average hides the spread. If your incidents differ a lot, run one scenario per type and add the totals by hand.

The second is that direct and additional costs do not overlap. The tool cannot see what your figures contain, so avoiding double counting is your responsibility. The third is a common period and scope: the count, the costs and the site or business unit should all refer to the same stretch of time.

Worked example

These figures are chosen for illustration and are not benchmarks. Suppose a site records 12 incidents in a year, with a direct cost of $4,500 per incident and an additional cost of $2,750.50 per incident, such as investigation time and replacement labour that the direct figure does not cover.

• Direct: 12 × $4,500 = $54,000.00
• Additional: 12 × $2,750.50 = $33,006.00
• Scenario total: $54,000.00 + $33,006.00 = $87,006.00

These are the three amounts the calculator shows for those inputs. Each further incident at the same assumptions adds $7,250.50.

Why the result can understate or overstate real cost

It can understate cost when incidents go unreported, when costs arrive in a later period such as claims or premium changes, when effects like lost trust or turnover are not in your records, or when a few severe cases sit behind a modest average. It can overstate cost when the same item appears in both fields, when a costly incident is used as the average for all of them, when an insurer's reimbursement is not netted off, or when time that would have been paid anyway is counted as a loss without a stated reason.

The three inputs, one by one

• Number of incidents. A whole number for one site or business unit over one period. Decide beforehand what counts: recordable cases, first-aid cases, near misses or all three. Counting near misses with injuries needs a cost for each, and a near miss may have a direct cost of zero.
• Direct cost per incident. Amounts you can trace to the event in your accounts, such as medical bills you paid, repair of damaged equipment or an excess on a claim. Take them from finance records, and say whether they are net of insurance recoveries.
• Additional cost per incident. Everything else you choose to include and can support, such as investigation hours, replacement labour or lost output. Anything already inside the direct figure stays out. The field starts at zero, which means no additional cost is included, not that none exists.

Keep a note of where each figure came from, who supplied it and the period it covers. The note is what turns the total from a guess into something a colleague can check.

A second example: two kinds of incident

The formula takes one representative cost per incident, so a mixed year is better run as two scenarios. These figures are invented for illustration. Suppose a year holds 30 minor cases, with a direct cost of $350 and an additional cost of $150 each, and 2 serious cases, with a direct cost of $18,000 and an additional cost of $9,500 each.

• Minor cases: 30 × $350 = $10,500.00 direct and 30 × $150 = $4,500.00 additional, so $15,000.00
• Serious cases: 2 × $18,000 = $36,000.00 direct and 2 × $9,500 = $19,000.00 additional, so $55,000.00
• Year: $15,000.00 + $55,000.00 = $70,000.00

Spread over the 32 incidents, that is $2,187.50 each ($70,000.00 ÷ 32). Entering 32 incidents at that blended figure reproduces the year only while the mix stays the same. If the year had held the same 30 minor cases and one serious case instead of two, the two-scenario sum would be $15,000.00 + $27,500.00 = $42,500.00, while 31 incidents at the blended figure would show $67,812.50. The $25,312.50 difference is the error that comes from treating a serious case as an average one.

A low, middle and high case

Using the 12 incidents of the first worked example, a low case of $3,000 direct and $1,500 additional gives $54,000.00, the middle case of $4,500 and $2,750.50 gives $87,006.00, and a high case of $6,000 and $4,000 gives $120,000.00. The spread between the low and high case shows how much the single figure depends on the inputs, and it is worth showing to whoever reads the result.

Where cost figures come from, and their limits

The tool holds no cost data, so every figure is yours. Two public sources, both opened on 4 October 2026, show how others build such figures and why they differ from an employer's own accounts.

• The OSHA Safety Pays background page says its average direct costs come from lost-time workers' compensation claims data supplied by NCCI for policy years 2015 to 2017 and that indirect costs are estimated with a sliding multiplier, from 4.5 times for the smallest claims down to 1.1 times for the largest bracket. It lists lost wages, work stoppage, overtime, supervisor time, replacement training, productivity and repair among the indirect items, and excludes OSHA fines, third-party liability, pain and suffering and reputational damage. It is a United States insurance-claim model and an average of past claims, not a measurement of your site.
• The HSE cost statistics, updated on 15 January 2026, put the total cost of work-related injury and ill health to Britain at around £22.9 billion in 2023/24 (given in 2023 prices), counting financial and human costs. Of that, £13.4 billion falls on individuals, £5.2 billion on government and £4.3 billion on employers, which sum to the total. The page says the estimate includes only new cases of work-related ill health and self-reported injuries, so it is neither a per-incident figure nor a basis for the amounts above. It does show that an employer's own accounts see only part of the total cost.

Using the figure

Treat the total as a scenario to discuss, not a forecast. Run a low, middle and high case, note where each input came from and its date, and check the direct figures against finance records. If the number supports a business case, keep it apart from any claimed benefit of software: a reduction percentage needs its own evidence. This is general guidance, not insurance or financial advice.