Where the numbers come from.
A short, plain note on the maths behind the panel that ticks up as you read.
What the panel shows
You will have seen the small panel on most pages — the one called Since you arrived — with a few numbers climbing as you stay on the page. UK workers injured at work. Working days lost. The cost to Britain.
The numbers are indicative, not real. They are based on official figures published by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and shown in a way that is easier to picture.
How the numbers work
We take an annual figure HSE publishes — for example, the total number of UK workers injured at work in a year. We work out how many of those happen per second on average. Then we multiply that by the number of seconds you have spent on the page.
live value = annual figure ÷ seconds in a year × your seconds on the page
It is the same idea as working out a wage per hour from an annual salary — just used for a much shorter window of time.
Why we show them this way
A single yearly figure can feel too big to take in. Showing it broken down — what would have happened on average in the few minutes you spent on the page — makes the scale easier to picture.
It is not meant to suggest that any one person was actually injured at the exact moment the counter changed. It is an average, presented in a way that means something.
What the numbers are not
- Not live. Real incidents do not happen on a clock. They cluster.
- Not specific to you or your workplace. They are national averages, spread across all UK workers.
- Not the whole picture. HSE figures are known to underrecord some kinds of work-related illness — particularly low-level musculoskeletal conditions and stress.
- Sometimes provisional. Recent fatality figures are marked as provisional by HSE until they are checked the following year.
Where the figures come from
Every headline figure on the site links back to its HSE source page. Where a figure comes from a different official body — like BOHS, BAFSA or the NHS Staff Survey — that is shown clearly next to the number.
Safe by choice has to start with a choice.
Twenty minutes. An honest conversation about your people, your risks, the work you are carrying. No pitch. No follow-up sequence. By the end we will both know whether there is something we can help with — and either way, you leave with at least one useful thing.
Because the workplace people walk into tomorrow is the one we decide on today.