Safety To Improve Business Performance
Each year around the world people lose their lives or are health affected because of work-related safety incidents. According to the World Health Organisation an average of 3 people are dying each minute due to on the job health and safety issues. A lot of these deaths come as a result of exposure to work place dangers which can cause ongoing illnesses such as cancer.
How does this relate to a business?
The problem with such generous global statistics is they divorce a business owner from the risk to their own business. It is simple to be with you the figures but these statistics are a poor motivator for making change. Different laws have been introduced globally to try and manage safety in workplaces. The first laws were prescriptive in their approach and did not relate to how people run. For example, in Australia a law was imposed which limited the consequence a women or junior working in a factory could lift. But these consequence limits in a factory would not apply to women working as nurses in hospitals or careers in childcare centres, and provide no protection at all to men. In addition, many back injuries were not caused not by the heavy load but by repetitive schedule or poorly designed work stations.
This led to a global change in the world, towards performance based legislation. This is a generalisation, as some countries are still very prescriptive. But, the general trend is to acknowledge a law can not be written for each situation. Even the same job, on the same day, using the same gear may be right for one person, but incorrect for another. Or right for one worker, but incorrect on another day. There are too many considerations. Therefore, the best may to measure and drive safety improvements is to gauge the employers safety performance. If the employee is getting injured, then the workplace has got it incorrect.
Best Safety Practice?
The difficulty with this conceopt is that an injury or accident has to have happened and thus the measure of success is reactive not proactive. Nevertheless, it may be the only successful way to measure the effectiveness of the law. But what about from a business’ point of view? Obviously, the best safety outcome is to have not anything happen. One of the largest ironies and challenges to safety professionals is selling the thoughts that money and time are invested in a safety program – to make sure not anything happens. This concept can be hard for the accountant to grasp, not intellectually, but in terms of making choices. Cut the safety program, or reduce advertising? Safety in the workplace decisions are a compromise between small term business survivability (marketing etc) vs long term success (safety to reduce risks).
Any business that has a long term vision of success must hace a safety programme in place. Safety and a businesses reputation are linked – look at BP in 2010 as an example. Other international equipment like swine or bird flu, tsunamis and earthquakes have resulted in many businesses questioning their preparednedd in dealing with emergency situations. The worry is that these international or even local events may adversely affect the continuity of the business and be devastating financially to the business. In addition to the financial crisis, investors want to invest in companies who know how to manage emergency and financial risks. A company that has an effective safety system has all of these consideration built into the system. Safety systems help authenticate potential investors, and the market that your business is a successful business.
