While some may see profit as a top priority, you can only drive your team so far before becoming completely negligent. At this point, mistakes and critical errors start happening which not only sets your business back but causes a wide array of mistakes and injuries. Not only is putting your employees at risk an irresponsible and unethical thing to do but it’s also something that could ruin your brand, harm your business and even ruin your enterprise. In order to understand just how deep this rabbit hole goes, there are several reasons why employee safety should be your No.1 priority.
-
Reducing workplace stress
The first reason why employee safety matters so much are due to the fact that an accident affects everyone in your employ, not just the people who were injured. Their coworkers will probably end up being distressed, as a result of this event, which will cause them to be less focused and more worried. As a result, the productivity plummets and, seeing as how their concentration will drop as well, the likelihood of another injury will increase. In a scenario where this becomes a regular occurrence, it’s easy to understand why your business will embark on a downward spiral.
-
Proper use of tools
Employee safety is not just about avoiding injury but also about using tools in the way they were meant to be used. During their manufacturing process, material handling equipment is specifically designed for two things – efficiency and safety of use. However, this only works if you decide to make no compromise. Fortunately, sellers of material handling equipment like Sitecraft offer a wide range of specialized equipment for various types of materials. It is, therefore, much safer to get a tool that was specifically designed of the task, than to try combining and improvising. The end result will never be the same and you’ll put your staff at considerable danger.
-
An expensive lawsuit
The next thing you need to be aware of is the fact that a workplace injury may lead to a dangerous lawsuit which will both tarnish your reputation and cost you a small fortune. Even if you do end up gaining an upper hand, the negative publicity alone, the stress caused by the process and all the rest that comes with it is definitely not worth it. By investing some extra effort in order to improve the overall employee safety you can easily avoid this trouble.
-
Awareness of one’s surroundings
An individual injury isn’t the only outcome of a lapse in attention/judgment. By being reckless and not minding their surroundings, people in your employ are bound to injure others, as well. At very least, they risk mishandling materials, which results in a loss of an asset regardless of how low its value might be, it’s still something that can easily be avoided. Furthermore, there are some instances in which minding your own surrounding may be related to the overall productivity. A clear and undeniable win-win scenario if there ever was one.
-
Talent recruitment and retention
The next thing you need to keep in mind is the fact that the reputation of a business as a safe or unsafe place to work at isn’t something that can remain hidden for long. This means that if you get known for many workplace injuries, you’ll have a hard time during your recruitment process. Even if you do attract some promising prospects (keep in mind that perspective employees always have numerous options), they’re bound to leave you on the first occasion. In other words, your employee safety is a staff matter in more ways than one.
-
Sick leave
A vital employee going on sick leave will result in a loss of efficiency which can be translated in a loss of revenue. Worse yet, a person that is on sick leave will have to be replaced by someone and chances are that this replacement won’t be as skilled an efficient. It’s easy to see just how this can increase the risk of the next injury, thus setting you even firmer on a vicious cycle. This net loss for your company means that an investment in safety usually has a positive ROI, even if you may not be able to make a precise estimate of it.
-
Long term health
Even an office work in which an employee spends an entire day sitting in a bad position will have a negative long-term effect on their health. Now think of it this way, how much focus can a person squeeze out while suffering a tremendous amount of back pain? Working with hazardous materials and dangerous machinery makes this problem even more transparent and obvious. It all comes down to productivity once again. Moreover, as we’ve discussed in the previous section, sick leave is an expensive ordeal for any business. By investing in the long-term health of your employees, you can lower the amount of time they spend there.
-
Most safety equipment are one-time purchases
In the end, you need to understand that safety equipment like protective glasses, hard hats, safety vests and similar items are one-time purchases that you probably won’t have to repeat until you start hiring more people (or the previous one breaks). This means that this is not a task that you have to handle on a regular basis, which, in turn, makes any time you spend researching this topic worth your while. On the other hand, inspecting whether your safety policies and rules are being followed requires a continuous effort.
In conclusion
Each of these reasons would be good enough on its own to make employee safety into a top priority, yet, when combined, they make it into the first one of your concerns. Also, it’s one of the things you definitely can’t afford to disregard, seeing as how doing so may doom your business to failure. Ideally, you should consult at least several experts on the topic, yet, doing some independent research also makes a difference.
