Each year, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) collects work-related injury and illness data from employers. This data collection is called the OSHA Data Initiative (ODI).
The data provided is used by OSHA to calculate establishment-specific injury and illness incidence rates. An incidence rate is the number of recordable injuries and illnesses occurring among a given number of fulltime workers (usually 100 full-time workers) over a given period of time (usually one year).
An employer may want to evaluate its injury and illness experience over time or compare its experience with that of the industry as a whole. This is called an employer’s incidence rate. These rates can help identify problems in the workplace and progress made in preventing work-related injuries and illnesses.