Several factors are important for determining return on the investment in safety and health interventions. The cost of any new equipment is an obvious one, but there are other factors that determine when, or if, a reduction in injury or an increase in productivity pays for the cost of the new equipment or program.

At this time there is no other generally available software program specific for businesses in the United States. Software programs used in other countries generally include information about:

• Employee characteristics: wages and associated fringe benefits and taxes, cost of supervision, cost of overtime
• Employee turnover and associated costs
• Occurrence and costs of injury
• Training costs and other start-up costs of new intervention
• Reduction in overtime, training costs, turnover attributable to new intervention
• Reduction of occurrence and costs of injury
• Change in productivity with new equipment/program

The NIOSH website includes a page that addresses the cost effectiveness of interventions in the workplace:

• http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/programs/global/economics.html