How to Reduce Your EMR With Verified Safety Data

How to Reduce Your EMR With Verified Safety Data

Your Experience Modification Rate (EMR) is one number, yet it shapes your insurance cost and your ability to win work. Many finance and risk leaders treat it as fixed, it's not. You can move it.

This guide is written for CFOs, risk managers, and COOs at general contractors. It explains what the EMR is, how it is set, and why it drives your workers' comp premiums and even your bid eligibility. Then it shows how verified safety data, not paper claims, can lower your EMR over time. BiltOn is a Safety Intelligence platform that helps enterprise general contractors turn field data into proof that lowers risk and cost.

You will leave with a plain view of the math, a worked example you can share with your board, and a clear path to a lower number.

What is an Experience Modification Rate (EMR)?

An Experience Modification Rate is a score that compares your safety record to other companies your size in your trade. It is often called an EMR, an e-mod, or an x-mod.

The average score is 1.00. A score above 1.00 means your claims are worse than average. A score below 1.00 means your claims are better than average. The National Council on Compensation Insurance, the main body that sets the formula, describes experience rating as a way to tailor insurance cost to each employer and to reward loss prevention.

Think of the EMR as a multiplier. It is applied to your base workers' comp premium. A 0.85 gives you a discount. A 1.25 adds a penalty. The number follows your company for years and shows up on many bid forms.

How is your EMR calculated?

Your EMR is built from your own claim history, usually over a three-year window. The rating bureau looks back at a set period, drops the most recent year, and compares your actual losses to the losses expected for a company like yours.

Two things matter more than most people think. The first is claim frequency. The second is claim severity.

Frequency is how often claims happen. Severity is how costly they are. The formula treats frequency as a bigger warning sign than one large loss. Many small claims can hurt your score more than a single serious one. That surprises a lot of finance teams.

Here is the part that matters for cash. Small "medical only" claims are often reduced in the formula, while claims with lost time count at full weight. So a claim that keeps a worker off the job is expensive twice. It costs the claim dollars, and it drives your EMR up for years.

This is why claim data quality is a finance issue, not just a safety issue. If a claim is logged wrong, or a false claim is never challenged, the number carries that error forward.

Why does your EMR drive premiums and bid eligibility?

Your EMR sets your price and your access to work. Both effects hit the bottom line.

On price, the EMR is a direct multiplier on your workers' comp premium. Cut the number, and you cut the bill. The worked example below shows the swing on a single policy.

The gap between a 0.85 and a 1.25 is $200,000 on one policy in this example. Scale that across a large enterprise program and the numbers grow fast. EMR changes can create up to $10 million in cost swing per $1 billion of work. That is real money for a COO to defend.

On access, many owners and public jobs set a hard EMR cutoff. A common line is 1.0. Cross it, and you are removed from the bid list before your price is even read. So a high EMR does not just raise cost. It can end the conversation.

The wider market backs this up. Insurers report that claim costs keep climbing even as injury rates fall. The 2025 Liberty Mutual Workplace Safety Index found that the top ten causes of serious workplace injuries cost United States employers $50.87 billion a year. The National Safety Council puts the total cost of work injuries at $181.4 billion for 2024. Carriers are pricing that pressure into your renewal. We covered this shift in detail in our look at why carriers are repricing GCs.

Why do paper claims keep your EMR high?

Paper-based safety records keep your EMR high because they are slow, thin, and easy to dispute. When a claim comes in, you often cannot prove what really happened on site.

Construction feels this the most. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded 1,032 fatal injuries among construction and extraction workers in 2024, the highest count of any occupation group. Travelers reports that injured construction workers miss an average of 114 days per injury, more than any other industry, and that first-year employees account for about 37 percent of injuries. High-severity, long-recovery claims are exactly the kind that push your EMR up and hold it there.

Now add fraud and disputed claims. If a worker files a claim for an injury that did not happen on your site, a paper log rarely proves it. The claim gets paid. Your EMR takes the hit. You may not see the full cost for two or three years.

There is also a data gap. Most contractors track lagging indicators, which are counts of things that already went wrong. OSHA defines leading indicators as proactive measures that reveal problems before they cause harm. Paper systems rarely capture leading indicators well. So you are managing risk by looking in the rear-view mirror. Our post on lagging indicators in construction safety breaks this down further.

How does verified safety data lower your EMR over time?

Verified safety data lowers your EMR in two ways. It prevents the claims that raise the score. And it gives you proof to fight the claims that should never count against you.

Start with prevention. When you capture leading indicators in the field, you can act before an incident. Worker credentials, pre-task plans, safety observations, and access events become live signals. You catch the untrained worker at the gate. You spot the crew skipping a pre-task plan. Fewer incidents mean fewer claims, and fewer claims mean a lower EMR over the next rating cycle.

The return is well documented. OSHA reports that more than 60 percent of CFOs say each dollar spent on injury prevention returns at least two dollars, and that Cal/OSHA inspections cut workers' comp costs by about 26 percent over four years. Prevention is not a soft cost. It is a measurable financial return.

Now the defense. Verified identity and access records let you challenge claims that are false or that did not happen on your site. This is where clean data pays for itself. When you can show exactly who was on site, when they checked in, and what task they were assigned, a disputed claim gets much easier to resolve.

Two BiltOn customers show this in practice. SD Builders moved its EMR from 2.1 to 1.2 in twelve months and reached zero false workers' comp claims using verified identity and access control, so bad claims stopped feeding its loss record. Archstone used verified records to dispute two fraudulent workers' compensation claims in the Bronx, keeping claims that should not exist off its file while moving its EMR from 1.4 to 0.6. Each blocked or disproven claim protects the EMR from a hit it did not earn.

Across its client base, BiltOn reports a 30 percent average EMR reduction. Note the timeline. Because the EMR looks back over a three-year window, changes made today show up over the next rating cycles. This is a compounding gain, not an overnight fix.

How does BiltOn help GCs reduce EMR?

BiltOn is the verified layer between the field and the carrier. It turns what happens on site into proof that stands up to an audit and to an underwriter. That proof is what moves the EMR.

Here is how the pieces fit for a finance and risk team. BiltOn captures worker identity with 3D facial verification and connected access control. It records pre-task plans, safety observations, and access events as verified leading indicators. It scores that data so you can act on risk early. Multilingual onboarding with SMS and browser signing means workers can be verified fast, with no app required.

The platform also has two-way sync with Procore and Autodesk, which are BiltOn partners. That keeps your safety records connected to the systems your teams already run. It closes the gap between field data and project data, so nothing lives on paper alone.

For the underwriter conversation, this matters. Carriers want to see a real safety program, not a binder. Verified records let your broker tell a stronger story at renewal and back it with data. We explain the mechanics in our post on how safety intelligence turns jobsite data into lower insurance costs.

The result is a cleaner loss record, a stronger renewal, and an EMR that reflects the safety you actually run. Lower workers comp premiums and better bid eligibility follow from that.

As Omer Slavin, Co-Founder and CEO of BiltOn, puts it: “See every site, verify every worker, prove every record.”

Request a demo and we will show you how BiltOn puts this to work on your sites, with your counsel in the room. Book a demo at bilton.tech/demo.

Executive takeaway

• The EMR is a multiplier on your workers' comp premium and often a hard cutoff on bid lists. A move from 1.25 to 0.85 saved $200,000 on a $500,000 base in our example.

• Claim frequency hurts your score more than a single large loss, so preventing many small lost-time claims protects the number.

• Paper claims keep the EMR high because they cannot prove what happened. Verified identity and access data can challenge false claims.

• Verified leading-indicator data both prevents claims and defends against bad ones. Archstone moved 1.4 to 0.6 and SD Builders 2.1 to 1.2.

• EMR changes can create up to $10 million in cost swing per $1 billion of work, so this is a board-level number.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good EMR for a construction company?

An EMR of 1.00 is the industry average. Anything below 1.00 is better than average and earns a discount. Many owners and public jobs require an EMR at or below 1.0 to bid, so a lower number both saves money and keeps you eligible for work.

How long does it take to lower your EMR?

It takes time because the EMR looks back over a rolling window, usually about three years. Safety improvements you make today show up over the next rating cycles, not overnight. This is why verified data is worth starting now, since the gains compound each year.

Can you reduce your EMR by fighting false claims?

Yes. False or misfiled claims can inflate your loss record and raise your EMR for years. With verified identity and access records, you can prove who was on site and when, which makes disputed claims easier to challenge. BiltOn customers like SD Builders and Archstone used verified records to defend against fraudulent and false claims.

Does a lower EMR really lower workers comp premiums?

Yes. The EMR is a direct multiplier on your base premium. A 0.85 EMR on a $500,000 base gives a $425,000 premium, while a 1.25 EMR on the same base gives $625,000. The savings scale with the size of your program.

What is the difference between leading and lagging indicators for EMR?

Lagging indicators count events that already happened, like injuries and claims. Leading indicators are proactive measures, like completed pre-task plans and verified credentials, that reveal risk before harm occurs. Tracking leading indicators helps prevent the claims that raise your EMR in the first place.

References

Bureau of Labor Statistics. “National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries in 2024.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 19 Feb. 2026.

Liberty Mutual. “2025 Workplace Safety Index.” Liberty Mutual Group, 15 July 2025.

National Council on Compensation Insurance. “ABCs of Experience Rating.” NCCI.

National Safety Council. “Work Injury Costs.” Injury Facts, 2024.

OSHA. “Business Case for Safety and Health.” U.S. Department of Labor.

OSHA. “Leading Indicators.” U.S. Department of Labor.

Travelers. “Injury Impact Report Highlights Longer Recovery Times Amid Declining Injury Rates.” The Travelers Companies, 4 May 2026.