What is EMR in Construction?
EMR (experience modification rate) is a number used by insurance companies to determine your past cost of injuries and future chances of risk. The lower the EMR, the lower your worker compensation insurance premiums, while a higher EMR drives up your premiums and takes you out of consideration for some contracts.
The construction industry average EMR is 1.0. At that level, your business is considered safe in the industry of your size. If your score is greater than 1.0, this indicates that you’ve had a worker compensation claim in the past 5 years that has been paid by your insurance provider. To mitigate risk, your insurance company will raise your worker compensation premiums for 3 years should an incident occur.
How Does EMR Impact My Business?
For contractors, an EMR score not only impacts the insurance premiums you pay but also the jobs you may work. Government contracts and lucrative private contracts will set a maximum EMR, limiting your company’s ability to bid on the job if you exceed the limit.
Should your business be under the maximum EMR, you’ll still be competing against contractors with low EMRs. Those with the lowest rate will receive preferential treatment in the bid process, despite the amount they’re quoting. This is all because they’re perceived as a lower risk than you on the job site.
How Do I Lower My EMR?
A lower EMR is achieved by minimizing risk through process and procedure and creating a culture around safety. It’s not just about filling out forms and requiring your crews to wear PPE.
To get your workforce involved in your safety culture, you need to be aware of what’s going on in the field and make it easy for your workers to share incidents and action them rapidly. If your office doesn’t act on violations immediately, you’ll quickly lose buy-in from your workforce.
Once you have buy-in and a constant stream of feedback, you can start improving areas where the data shows the most safety violations. By pinpointing where your problems are, you have much more control over your incident rates.
To help create a culture around safety and pin-point your problems, construction operations software like Assignar is built to automate tasks and simplify the process for the field and office.
If you manage multiple projects, the process of collecting paperwork from the field can be very manual and create an issue of double data entry. With Assignar, all forms are digital and automatically logged against workers, equipment, projects, and clients. Information is available with a click of a button in the field or office. The forms are even GPS and time-stamped so you have proof of when and where incidents occur.
See how Assignar can relieve the burden of managing your safety and compliance with a quick demo.
