Safety First: In The Interests of People And Profit
Safety is without question necessary for you to run a successful business, as this impacts people but also profit too. The Bureau Of Labor Statistics claims that every year there are 1 million work-related injury and illness cases. This indicates that business owners are not doing enough to avoid hazards and situations that impair the safety of its staff.
Sadly, sometimes businesses preempt that their safety program is excellent until someone is badly hurt. With years of people in the workforce experiencing different injuries safety should be a priority in your business. With some of these fatal or even causing death, surely by now we have accrued enough knowledge to put the necessary precautions in place to prevent these injuries. In this post, you’ll learn why you should put safety first as it can increase profit and is in the best interest of your people.
Picture by Mircea Iancu
Why Putting Safety First Matters For Your People And Profit
A common mistake business owners make is to put more emphasis, time, money, and energy into creating a profit rather than keeping people (both workers and customers) safe in their business.
Sometimes entrepreneurs fall into the trap of thinking that safety and profit as entirely separate entities, when in fact they are more connected than you might think.
For example, during a risk assessment of the potential hazards of your work premises, you can determine what needs fixing. This can help you prepare you for the worst. You can also know how to prevent an accident and what are the likely outcomes if you don’t stop an accident occurring.
Primarily business owners should have the utmost concern for people’s safety. But beyond an injury on the workplace of a worker or customer, other problems lie in wait that will impact the profitability of your company. This can come as a result of an illness or injury caused on your premises.
A Few Common Examples Of What Can Happen When You Don’t Put Safety First
- The employee may seek compensation by making a claim, which if successful abstracts money away from your profit.
- Your business insurance may go up as a result of the incident.
- If other workers are present and witness the event, this may cause uncertainty and fear in the workplace. This can cause people to leave or do their job ineffectively, which will again cost the company the money.
- If the incident reaches the media, this could damage the reputation of your business, which will also affect a companies profit.
The potential outcomes following an injury above all have one thing in common, they will affect your business’s profit. Hoping for the best and relying on luck isn’t enough for companies to see them through the hazards that could cause, injury, illness or even death in the workplace. Planning, risk assessment, and safety procedures are what will prevent you from the dark times beginning at all.
“Precaution is better than cure.” ~Edward Coke
Safety First To Keep Your People And Profits Intact
Here are a few things you can implement in your business processes, to enhance your existing health and safety program. If you don’t have a safety program in place it can also help you create a new one.
Professional Assessment
There are specific health and safety guidelines all must adhere too. However, this won’t include everything and anything that could propose a hazard in your industry.
Which is why apart from a member of your HR team scouring the premises for likely accidental causes, you may want to hire a professional. A safety expert can help to assess your workplace and premises to instruct you of what you can do to stop safety hazards in their tracks.
Even if this does mean paying out a bit of money initially it’s worth the investment.
Talk To Employees
It makes sense that you or whoever in your business handles health and safety would take an active interest in speaking to staff. The should focus on asking about health and safety hazards, rather than only being alerted when an incident occurs.
Talking to your team, showing your concern and expressing a will to guard their safety in the workplace will also enhance your manager, employee relationship.
Practice Runs
If you haven’t already included a regular practice run in your business processes to test everyone’s knowledge and ability to vacate the building safely, you should. Whether you’re a startup or a large established business it’s essential for you to implement this.
With all staff having a familiar route to follow in an emergency, no one is left uncertain. They will know what to do and where to go in the event of a fire or natural disaster.
Interactive Safety Programs
Quite often as a new employee enters a business, little importance is laid on the safety element in the workspace. Moreover, they are more than likely to be passed a large book detailing health and safety standards to abide by and are expected to read the entire book.
Skimming over the importance of safety in your business premises with staff could have devastating effects in the event of a real emergency. In retaliation to this, to bring home the importance of health and safety to employees, you could provide interactive sessions.
For instance, you could identify scenarios, have the workplace split up into teams to discuss what they would need to do next. Another option is how they would handle a situation to ensure it’s safe.
An example of a scenario might be; asking your employees to talk about what packaging for lithium batteries, chemicals and so on should be used on these products or waste. Then encouraging your staff in teams to discuss the likely outcomes and what it means for their safety.
Creating an interactive health and safety program is more likely to resonate with employees and be remembered by them too. This will help employees to prevent safety hazards from occurring in the future.
Revisit Your Health And Safety Processes
Never get complacent with your regime for practice runs and teaching employees the importance of safety. As the business changes, the location, procedures, practices, packaging, uniforms, the health, and safety process will need to change to.
This is why revisiting your health and safety process is vital. Do this to ensure you’re not following an old routine and that you are sourcing new ways and technology to keep you and your staff safe.
“Safety brings first aid to the uninjured.” ~F.S. Hughes
Know Your Industry Safety Hazards To Put Safety First
Health and safety hazards are not exclusive to a particular industry or the size of your business unless your company doesn’t require employees to be successful it’s imperative you take care of health and safety standards.
As identified at the beginning of the post, 1 million injuries a year indicates some companies are not putting safety first as a priority. Consider this in comparison to the time and resources spent in dedication to making a profit.
However, as mentioned, putting safety first in your business can actually help you sustain your business’s profit. This can happen by preventing claims for compensation, maintaining a good reputation, and instilling confidence in your staff to do their job well in the knowledge that they are working in a safe environment
Implement these safety first tips to help protect your people and profit in your business.
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