How to calculate the total cost of occupational health and safety activity

Introduction
To represent the occupational health and safety activity with the accounting methods used for management decision is considered to be effective to clarify the position and impact of occupational health and safety in business activities and to promote a proactive approach to them. We decided to develop a method for calculating the cost of health and safety activities.

Methods
We conducted interviews at three facilities and evaluated the practicality and made the spreadsheet to calculate the costs. And then, depending on the situations, we made revisions of them.

Results
First, labor costs for employees involved in health and safety activities are recorded, and then the costs of their individual activities are classified as cost and investment and recorded. Labor costs include salary, bonus, welfare and kinds of allowances and the costs for employees other than full-time health and safety staff are calculated proportionally to the percentage of how long they are engaged in occupational health and safety activities. The Individual activities are classified into 19: for example "emergency response and support", "working environment measurement", "health checkup", and so on.

Discussion
Costs of occupational health and safety activities can be expressed in terms of money, but how to express it in conjunction with the effect remains to be solved. To make the costs of them visible has an important role as “Financial Accounting”, which explains to outsiders what kinds of health and safety activities are conducted by CSR reports, and it has also a roll as “Management Accounting”, which can make it possible for the managers to judge how much cost is put on each activities. It is considered to be a part of guidelines for occupational physicians to improve their own activities. We are scheduled to develop an indicator which is combined with other evaluation figures (for examples “Time”) other than “Money”.