Saving money, boosting productivity and employing happy, healthy individuals is something every business strives for, and you can do all three by taking one simple step: construction and contracting businesses that establish safety and health management systems can reduce their injury and illness costs.
In addition to directly impacting costs, safe environments also improve employee morale, which positively impacts productivity and work quality. When it comes to the costs associated with safety, consider the following OSHA statistics:
- Employers pay almost $1 billion per week for direct workers’ compensation costs alone, which comes straight out of company profits.
- Injuries and illnesses increase workers’ compensation and retraining costs.
- Lost productivity from injuries and illnesses costs companies roughly $63 billion each year.
In today’s business environment, these safety-related costs can be the difference between reporting a profit or a loss. Use these tips to understand how safety programs will directly impact your company’s bottom line.
Measuring the Cost of Safety
Demonstrating the value of safety to management is often a challenge because the return on investment (ROI) can be cumbersome to measure. Your goal in measuring safety is to balance your investment vs. the return expected. Where do you begin?
There are many different approaches to measuring the cost of safety, and the way you do so depends on your goal. Defining your goal helps you to determine what costs to track and how complex your tracking will be.
For example, you may want to capture certain data simply to determine what costs to build into the price of your services, or you may want to track your company’s total cost of safety to show increased profitability, which would include more specific data collection like safety wages and benefits, operational costs and insurance costs.
If it is important for your organization to measure safety as it relates to profitability, more accurate tracking should be done. For measuring data, safety costs can be divided into two categories:
- Direct (hard) costs, which include the following: Safety wages, Operational costs, Insurance premiums and/or attorney’s fees, Accidents and incidents, Fines and/or penalties
- Indirect (soft) costs, which go beyond those recorded on paper, such as the following: Accident investigation, Repairing damaged property, Administrative expenses, Worker stress in the aftermath of an accident resulting in lost productivity, low employee morale and increased absenteeism, Training and compensating replacement workers, Poor reputation, which translates to difficulty attracting skilled workers and lost business share.
When calculating soft costs, minor accident costs are about four times greater than direct costs, and serious accidents about 10 to 15 times greater, especially if the accident generates OSHA fines or litigation costs.
According to the International Risk Management Institute (IRMI), just the act of measuring costs will drive improvement. In theory, those providing the data become more aware of the costs and begin managing them. This supports the common business belief that what gets measured gets managed. And, as costs go down, what gets rewarded gets repeated.
How Can You Show ROI?
OSHA studies indicate that for every $1 invested in effective safety programs, you can save $4 to $6 as illnesses, injuries and fatalities decline. With a good safety program in place, your costs will naturally decrease. It is important to determine what costs to measure to establish benchmarks, which can then be used to demonstrate the value of safety over time.
Also, keep in mind that your total cost of safety is just one part of managing your total cost of risk. When safety is managed and monitored, it can also help drive down your total cost of risk.
Safety as a Core Business Strategy
Industry studies report that companies who focus on safety as a core business strategy come out ahead. For example, the American Society of Safety Engineers reports that a fall protection program implementation by a U.S. construction company reduced their accident costs by 96 percent – from $4.25 to $0.18 per person-hour.
Considering the statistics, safety experts believe that there is direct correlation between safety and a company’s profit. We are committed to helping you establish a strong safety, health and environmental program that protects both your workers and your bottom line. Contact us today at 410-213-5600 to learn more about our value-added services.
