Setting Goals for 2021: Safety is the Best Investment You Can Make
Table of Contents
Compounding costs of workplace injuries
Safety culture
Proactive safety measures in the workplace
Paying the steep price
When planning your worker safety program, the first and immediate benefit you have in mind is, of course, your team’s physical and mental safety. But on another level, improving your employee safety is also a serious investment in your organization, saving a significant amount of capital in multiple areas. Safety is a two-way street that has serious beneficial implications for your organization. Investing in safety culture and programs are some of the soundest decisions a business can make.
Compounding costs of workplace injuries
Workplace injuries are one of the single largest costs a business will face. The National Safety Council says that work injuries in 2018 incredibly cost more than $170 billion – this includes wage and productivity losses, medical and administrative expenses, employers’ uninsured costs, as well as fire losses.
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 reflective 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 positive safety culture is going to be different from every other organization: what will work is a smart response to what isn’t working now, and investing in a solution. A strong safety culture isn’t just a list of rules and protocols, it’s a supportive, complementary network of relationships and plans supported by successful communication, that all work together to protect the well-being of each other and the company. A positive safety culture is possible by focusing and fostering key areas like encouraging safety-issue reporting, efficient and regular connection, as well as transparency when it comes to possible safety hazards and risks.
Proactive safety measures in the workplace
Proactive safety measures include any tactics that mitigate and minimize the likelihood of an incident taking place. Proactive safety anticipates accidents before they happen so you are able to be more prepared and significantly reduce life-or-death response times, not only reducing the number of injuries and suffering amongst your team, but also decreasing the number of compensation claims and amount of time off needed for recuperation.
Paying the steep price
In a Conference Board of Canada report, the findings say that from 2004 to 2010, the economic cost of worker injuries in the country increased by 34 percent – a rate that will end up costing Canadians at least $75 billion by 2035.
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 non-compliance 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 for themselves 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!
Want to talk about investing in the safety of your team? We’re free to chat.