Whether your small business is you and a mate sat in the garden shed or an SME with 30 people, it’s still important you consider workplace safety and the costly implications an accident could mean for you and your company. But how costly are workplace accidents?
It’s costly. Seriously.
Let’s start with the obvious one: Revenue loss.
From the 2013/2014 statistics from HSE, work-related injuries and illness cost businesses a staggering £14.3 billion. But how much is actually the cost of a workplace accident? Well, let’s take the worst possible case as an example: A fatal workplace accident will cost a business £1.5 million, not mentioning the moral responsibilities of having employees losing their lives during the accident.
Productivity-wise, the figure is just as shocking: There were 27.3 million days of employee time lost, due to work related illness during 2014/15.
If monetary and productivity loss isn’t enough to stress the importance of workplace health and safety, try this: There were 728 prosecution cases processed due to health and safety policy breaches in 2014/15.
Fortunately, those figures can be reduced with strong health and safety policies to minimise the costly repercussions an accident could have on a business.
PPE experts Safeaid have put together this helpful infographic, which takes a look at the expense behind an accident in the workplace. Take a careful look through the infographic to discover what costs could befall you, should an accident occur, then go away and check you have everything in place to prevent these.
Recap/Conclusion
Workplace accidents are costly. Remember, there are direct and indirect costs of the accidents; so, not only the salary of the absent employees, there are also costs incurred for training other staff to cover for the absent employees. There are also other costly consequences, such as the loss of business, productivity, brand reputation and so on. You really need a plan in place to prevent all the costs.
There are multiple benefits when you have good health and safety policy in place, namely lower absences and staff turnover, increased productivity, fewer accident risks, and reduced legal action threats. The upsides of allocating sufficient resources to create and enforce health and safety plans are much more greater than the costs.
But why are there still some companies that don’t prioritize the health and safety of their business premise and employees? Perhaps there are budgetary constraints, but – assuming that business owners are not bad guys – I believe that the only hindrance for companies not to focus on those is simply ignorance.
Therefore, I’d like to implore for business owners to pay more attention to their employees’ wellbeing by ensuring their health and safety in the workplace. Please.