Why is health and safety important?
There is:
- A moral obligation on employers, employees and every other person in a workplace to look after themselves and others.
- Financial impact on employers, employees and every person in a workplace, e.g. compensation, fines, lost earnings etc.
- A legal obligation on the employer, employee and every person in a workplace to ensure the health, safety and welfare of others.
The costs of poor health and safety management
- Personal loss and distress to families, loss of earnings.
- Staff morale and dissatisfaction, increased turnover – staff may feel unsafe at work and leave.
- Extra staff – more employees needed or use agency to replace.
- Loss of reputation – loss of business or closure, difficult to gain a good reputation, easy to lose it when the media carry stories of your business. Includes staff and customers losing confidence.
- Loss of production – who does your job if you are not there?
- Sometimes colleagues have to cover, increasing stress and leading to more mistakes. Companies will have to rearrange production.
- Fines, compensation – and legal costs.
- Legal fines resulting from prosecutions, add to legal costs of the case, increased compensation claims from accidents, increased insurance premiums to pay for accident compensation claims.
- Employer liability insurance, and public liability insurance will increase.
- Increased numbers of accidents will occur if safety is not managed.
- Cost of treatment – this will include lost time of the injured person, the first aider and any others involved, the cost of the first aid materials.
- Cleaning up – not just literal cleaning up but repairs to buildings and equipment that may have been damaged.
- Personal injury, the suffering, pain, loss of wages and resultant domestic disruption.
Benefits of good health and safety management:
These are opposite to costs; there is a clear link between good management, quality and consistency.
Manage health and safety well and quality improves.