Safety as an Investment
When you think about a safe business, you should think about more than safety as something you can provide for your workers at a cost to yourself. Safety, when done right, can make your workers safe and will make your business safer from a financial perspective. This transforms safety into a two-way street that has serious beneficial implications for your organization. This is Safety Culture, and investing in it is one of the safest moves a business can make.
Compounding costs
Workplace injuries are one of the single largest costs a business will face. Direct costs, indirect costs, and the tangible loss of profit that comes with an injury will very quickly add up. When an employee is injured, maybe your insurance provider pays the bills. If so, you’ll wind up with increased premiums.The work that the injured employee was performing still needs to be done, but now you’re short-staffed. Hiring someone to replace them means having to train them, and that’s taking someone from your organization away from their work to help with someone else’s.All of this means lost time, and lost earnings on that time is harder to make up for than preventing that loss in the first place.
Safety culture
Investing in safety isn’t buying high-vis jackets, at least on its own. it’s something that is ongoing and involves a lot of reflecting on how your organization manages risk, protects employees, and actively works towards introducing incremental changes that can add up over time. Time and again, it’s been proven that investing in Safety has a measurable profit. For Schneider Electric, it was a sevenfold return on their annual investment. The return came as a radical reduction in annual costs that they didn’t even realize they were paying, again and again.The way your organization promotes Safety Culture is going to be different from every other organization: what works for you is a response to what isn’t working now, and investing in a solution.
Paying the price
Not all safety is made equal: price and value are important to consider. Warren Buffet, the famous philanthropist, had this to say about it: "Price is what you pay. Value is what you get."In Canada, the price of noncompliance isn’t just financial, it’s a criminal liability that can mean jail time. No one wants to spend time in jail over entirely preventable accidents! Many safety measures pay forthemselves if they can prevent even a single accident, and almost certainly it will be the case that preventing a single injury covers the cost of protecting many employees for a year or longer!We’ve put together all the information you’ll need to be able to decide on how best to bring Safety Culture in our eBook, Investing in Safety. We think that it makes the strongest possible case for Safety Culture while taking the mystery and guesswork out of the real costs that come with workplace injuries. We know that you’ll be glad you took a look!