The True Costs of Failing to Manage Health and Safety

There is a tendency in the UK to trivialise health and safety. This important issue can sometimes become the butt of jokes and the saying ‘health and safety gone mad’ is frequently used. However in reality health and safety is one of the most important issues of the modern working world. Health and safety courses online and e-learning can help to reduce the number of fatalities in the workplace.

In the last three decades alone the number of fatalities at work has fallen by over 80%. This has been clearly linked to the improvements in modern health and safety standards.  Health and safety can save lives and also reduce financial loss for businesses.

Costs to Your Workforce

Accidents at work can cause a huge amount of suffering to your employees and their families. Even minor accidents can result in painful injuries that could keep staff off work for weeks. More serious accidents could result in employees being unable to work again or could even result in fatalities. This can have a devastating impact on the lives of friends, families and colleagues.

It is the responsibility of the employer to try and reduce risk to prevent these accidents from occurring in the first place. Health and safety regulations can help you understand just what you need to do to reduce risk and make your business a safer place.

Costs to You

It can be difficult to see why you need to spend out on training staff and implementing health and safety policies. However there are some compelling financial reasons why you must take health and safety seriously for your business.

  • Every year as many as 30 million working days in the UK are lost due to injuries at work.
  • This adds up to millions of pounds of loss in terms of sick-pay, sick leave cover, overtime, production delays and incident investigation time.
  • Work-related slips and trips alone cost the UK economy nearly £800 million every year.
  • Millions of pounds worth of damage to property, equipment and supplies are incurred by UK businesses due to accidents at work.
  • Work-related personal injury compensation claims can costs businesses thousands of pounds in terms of legal fees and successful claims.
  • These claims can also take up a lot of working hours as you investigate claims and prepare cases.
  • The Health and Safety Executive have the power to fine businesses for non-compliance.  These fines can add up to as much as £100,000 or more.

As you can see there are some high financial costs to pay for failing to implement health and safety in your workplace. Therefore, don’t trivialise this issue. Start putting in place proper health and safety standards now and protect your workforce and business from work-related accidents and injuries. Money invested in health and safety now could help you avoid some big problems in the future.

Starting Your Health and Safety Policy

You could hire a professional health and safety officer to assess your business and write up your health and safety policy. This is a good idea if you run a large business or work in a high-risk area.  Smaller businesses could carry out their own internal risk assessments and policy writing with some additional training.

However you set up your policy it is important that you manage it properly. Checks and audits can help to ensure procedures are implemented to reduce risk and ensure you are complying with health and safety laws. Health and safety courses online are available to train staff in a wide range of areas from working at heights to fire safety.

Online Health and Safety Courses

Following Health and Safety regulations can significantly reduce the risks of costly work-related accidents. Train employees now with health and safety courses online and make your business a safer place.

Related Health and Safety Courses Available Online