Accident at Work as an Indicator Supporting the Decision Making Process

Identification of trends of the examined phenomenon plays a major role in taking decisions and allows conducting a deeper analysis of phenomena connected with the shaping of proper working conditions. One of the result indicators in the OSH system is the accident rate, whose existence is the result of a combination of various events. Seeking tangible economic benefits, decision makers in business entities who wish to improve activities protecting health and life of employees, pay great attention to using quantitative methods and drawing conclusions from them. This is conditioned by the fact that the analysis of the economic aspects of accidents is connected to a large extent with the cost of benefits the employer incurs for the benefit of accident victims. Therefore, the main goal of the article is to examine what impact on the cost of benefits due to accidents at work is exerted by such factors as: the number of related benefits, persons injured in accidents at work depending on the consequences and the number of days of inability to work caused by these accidents. Furthermore, this paper shows changes in costs of accident benefits of persons receiving those benefits due to inability to work caused by accident in business. In order to achieve this, it is proposed to present an econometric analysis based on the cross-section-time data with the dynamics of considered variables in voivodeships in Poland being examined. The study uses the annual data for the years 2010-2017. The data come from the CSO publications.