Most of all companies want to be safe. They want their employees to go home at the end of each day injury and illness free. And yet these same companies and their employees make decisions which put them at risk. Sometimes the risk is small and as we all know sometimes we take some pretty big risks. Two common justifications for taking risks, both large and small, are time and money. Building safety into the job/process will increase costs and slow us down.
The idea that safety costs us time and money seems logical, but is it really?
According to the U.S. Department of Labor “businesses spend $170 billion a year on costs associated with occupational injuries and illnesses — expenditures that come straight out of company profits. But workplaces that establish safety and health management systems can reduce their injury and illness costs by 20 to 40 percent. In today’s business environment, these costs can be the difference between operating in the black and running in the red.”
