Utilization of health and safety consulting services of the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation by small businesses.

Abstract

The Division of Safety and Hygiene (DSH) of the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation (OBWC) provides health and safety consulting services to all businesses in Ohio insured by OBWC. It has been conceptualized that small companies in Ohio do not use health and safety consultative services to the same extent as non-small companies. To determine the validity of this belief, this study was conducted to analyze the records of the DSH for the years 1991-1995 in the Division's Southeast Region which contained a total of 281,041 insured companies. Of the 5977 companies utilizing the health and safety services of DSH and recording their number of employees, 65.3 percent were "small," defined as any company with less than 20 employees. Specific services used by businesses included industrial hygiene (small, 3.4% vs. non-small, 6.4%), ergonomics (0.7% vs. 2.8%), engineering such as ventilation or machine guarding (0.6% vs. 1.7%), construction safety (26.7% vs. 3.9%), and general safety such as implementing a safety program (31.4% vs. 22.4%). In conclusion, industrial hygiene, ergonomics, and engineering service utilization were significantly lower for the small businesses than for the non-small businesses, whereas safety service utilization was significantly higher for the small business. Improvement in the system of record-keeping and education/encouragement in the deployment of services are recommended.