Return on Health, Safety and
  Environmental Investments (ROHSEI)

With the global market place driving competition, health and safety expenditures must enhance company competitiveness and effectively control recognized workplace risks. Currently, trailing measures of "failure" are most commonly used to assess an organization's health and safety performance. Examples in the United States include Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) lost workday injury and illness rates, workers' compensation, property damage, and business interruption costs. These measures do not effectively tie health and safety performance to the financial health of the business. An extensive literature search suggests that, other than costs associated with workers' compensation, the direct costs of health and safety programs, and multiplier estimates of indirect illness and injury costs, no universally accepted method to assess the overall business impact of health and safety investments and expenditures is practiced.  

Fifteen member companies of the ORC (ORC) Occupational Safety and Health Group -- ALCOA, AlliedSignal, ARCO, Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Colgate-Palmolive, Dow, Duke Power, Eli Lilly, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Monsanto, M&M Mars, Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, Schering-Plough -- formed a task force to work with ORC and Arthur Andersen to tailor traditional financial investment analysis approaches and apply them to achieve a better understanding of the business impacts of health, safety and environmental investments.  To accomplish these objectives, the project had to go beyond measures of failure to formulate a set of analytical tools to provide cost/benefit information for making effective cost/risk decisions. 

The "Return on Health, Safety and Environmental Investments" (ROHSEI) process and tools were developed through interviews with financial, health and safety, and operational professionals, data collection from more than a dozen companies, focus group sessions, and field testing.  Since 1997, ROHSEI has demonstrated that analytical tools currently used and accepted by the financial community can be applied to health and safety investments when appropriate data elements underpin  the analysis.  The process allows users to evaluate health and safety investments on a cost/performance basis.

ROHSEI Users Group - This group is a resource for persons who are using the ROHSEI methodology and tools and wish to share cases, discuss issues or enhance their skills by interacting with other users.  This group is also for those who have taken the training to use ROHSEI, but may need further assistance in getting started with using it to evaluate opportunities arising in their workplaces. 

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