Safety Saves

By: Matt McCreery

Improving your company's safety culture should be an integral part in growing or sustaining a successful business. Your safety culture's credo should be to bring each and every employee home safely every day. As you all know this can be accomplished by a variety of different programs, policies, and involvement. There isn't a simple answer to accomplish this goal, but continually striving towards it will improve not just your injuries, but your bottom line. Here a four ways that safety can save, beyond saving lives.

Absence

The most costly type of absence for a business is sick leave due to illness, or accidents caused by work.

Here are some ways where less employee absence can save money:

• Save money spent on the direct costs of absence. These include paying the salary of the absent employee, any overtime incurred by other employees covering for the absent employee, any loss of output incurred by the absent employee and the costs of hiring temporary cover
• Keep valued staff and avoid unnecessary recruitment and training costs
• Keep your business productive, maintaining your client-base with uninterrupted employee-client relations
• Save money on the indirect costs of absence. These include the time taken for a replacement to learn the new role and become productive; possible diminished services and product quality; loss of business, continuity and reputation
• Save money due to less time spent arranging and providing cover, training and providing support to other staff.

Improving health and safety measures at the workplace reduces the likelihood that people will need sick leave in the fist place, and bringing them back to work quicker means less disruption in the long run.

Insurance and Compensation

As the employer you are responsible for the health and safety of your employees while they are at work. With very few exceptions, employers must have Worker Compensation Insurance to cover for injuries and ill health experienced by their employees while at work.

Employers may also have insurance for accidents involving vehicles, and possibly third-party and buildings insurance. However, insurance policies only cover a small proportion of the costs of accidents. Costs that are not covered by insurance may include:

• Sick pay
• Lost time
• Damage or loss of product and raw materials
• Repairs to equipment
• Overtime working and temporary labor
• Production delays
• Insurance investigation time
• Fines
• Loss of contracts
• Legal costs
• Loss of business reputation

Uninsured costs can outweigh the insured costs - and these uninsured costs come straight off the company's 'bottom-line' profits.

Saving on the cost of employee accidents and ill health is an investment in the future of your business. Poor health and safety procedures could mean increased insurance premiums or difficulty in obtaining future insurance coverage.

For these reasons, maintaining a good standard of health and safety in the workplace can mean lower insurance premiums and more money in the bank.

Reputation Damage

You have worked hard to establish a positive and respectable image for your business and your business thrives on good public relations - increasing sales and generating more leads. But when bad things happen to your good name, it can be a costly experience, resulting in a loss of revenue and depressed profits. Whether your business is large or small, a bad reputation puts people off. It's vital that your business maintains a good name.

However, it's easy to prevent damage to your health and safety reputation by implementing a simple and effective safety program. Preventing accidents and ill health at work saves you time and money and contributes to your good reputation with your workers, their friends and associates.

Productivity and Efficiency

The health and wellbeing of your employees can make a significant difference to your company's productivity and efficiency.

Improved health and safety can lead to better productivity if employees are able to carry out their work with less difficulty and less danger. Good levels of health and safety standards within the workplace will help maximize the amount of uptime your business enjoys. Working days lost due to injury or illness can be reduced, while at the same time morale and productivity are increased. Your employees will appreciate improvements made to their working environment so not only could it save you money, but it could add to your profitability in the long run.