Reducing Cost of Safety With a Next-generation Safety Solution

Often, businesses look at health and safety as a regulatory requirement and take the necessary steps to meet compliance needs. However, both safety leaders and executive management must realize that safety is not just something that needs to be ticked off! Rather, a proactive approach to continuously improve workplace safety can save costs and improve overall financial performance.

In fact, this approach of “just focus on compliance” can prove counter-productive by making safety initiatives ineffective due to a lack of top management commitment and also result in employee indifference.

According to the UK-based Health and Safety Executive (HSE), not having a good health and safety management system can prove costly for human health as well as have a negative impact on financials. Consider these statistics and indicative data points:

• Work-related illness and injury cumulatively result in “millions of days” of absenteeism
• Thousands of deaths occur from occupational diseases
• Work-related illnesses affect nearly a million workers
• Several hundred thousand workers are injured at work every year
• Among them, at least one worker is fatally injured every working day

This disrupts production, leading to delayed deliveries and lowering customer satisfaction. Due to the need to quickly replace an absent worker, untrained personnel may be assigned tasks leading to quality and safety issues. Organizations may incur uninsured losses and loss of reputation. They will have to pay up the penalty for negligence and also compensation to the employee and their family for the injury or death. Replacing and training costs also get added to the overall costs.

According to the National Safety Council, work injuries in 2020 cost $163.9 billion, including wage and productivity loss of $44.8 billion, medical expenses of $34.9 billion, and administrative costs of $61.0 billion.

There is no doubt that every enterprise needs to implement a safety management solution to streamline and automate safety processes. The question leaders sometimes have is: how do we show the Return on Investment (ROI) for implementing an EHS solution? A good starting point is to showcase what unsafe behavior and safety risks can potentially cost.

According to IRMI, “safety costs can be divided into two categories: costs of safety-producing activities and non-safety costs.” Once these two are clearly demarcated, the ROI from implementing an EHS solution becomes extremely obvious.

Benefits of Modern Safety Management and How it Helps to Reduce the Cost of Safety

A well-designed modern safety management can provide businesses with a variety of benefits such as cost savings, lower risks, a decrease in employee absenteeism, and lower turnover rates. It ensures fewer accidents, increasing the brand’s reputation among investors, customers, suppliers, partners, and communities. This also means lower spending on litigation, improved productivity, and enhanced employee engagement.

A modern, cloud-based Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) software such as ComplianceQuest can help reduce costs and improve the bottom line by:

Preventing Accidents: A good safety management system helps to identify potential risks to health and safety and proactively put in controls to minimize or eliminate the chances of their occurrence. This could be through appropriate training to develop the worker’s capabilities as well as improve safe behavior. Setting up warnings and alerts to notify management and trigger investigations, empowering employees to report near-misses, observations, and events, and integrating preventive and corrective action plans to minimize the risk of future occurrences goes a long way in ensuring workplace safety.

Improving Compliance: Noncompliance, especially in high-risk industries, can attract fees for violations of safety and environmental rules or not meeting reporting deadlines. A modern safety management solution can ensure timely submissions. Not only will this reduce the cost of fines and penalties, but a strong compliance track record also reduces the number of inspections and enforcement actions the business may otherwise face.

Lower Insurance Premium: A company that takes its safety seriously, identifies risks, and puts controls in place, establishing a track record of efficient and effective safety management, can pay a lower premium for the insurance of its facilities, equipment, and workers.

Higher Productivity: The CQ EHS software enables the centralization of tasks and documents, facilitates communication across locations, increases transparency, and improves collaboration. Moreover, a safe workplace enhances employee loyalty and engagement. With periodic training, employees are better equipped to perform their tasks with the right capabilities, improving outcomes.

Efficient Audit and Inspection Management: Audits and inspections play an important role in improving workplace safety. The CQ solution has an integrated audit and inspection solution that ensures timely checks, documentation, and follow-up action to improve safety processes continuously.

Better Incident Reporting and Management: One of the most important features of a modern safety management system like ComplianceQuest is in empowering employees to report incidents, near misses, and observations from their workplace. They can click images and upload them as the event unfolds. If the network connection is poor, the system synchronizes when there is network connectivity. They can also keep track of the follow-up action taken. Anonymous reporting protects workers from the fear of retribution.

Risk-Based Approach: The records of all the events are available in a centralized registry. This helps identify patterns, high-risk areas, and frequent issues, helping safety leaders prioritize the safety management process, perform root-cause analysis, and rectify the source of the problem.

Tower of Safety Information: ComplianceQuest also provides top management with a centralized view of safety data from across the organization, including different geographic locations. This can help customize the safety processes to address specific issues pertinent to the respective locations.

Mobile-Readiness: Being cloud-based, the ComplianceQuest solution allows any time, anywhere access to the solution without compromising on data security or privacy.

By unifying safety and process data from across the organization, businesses can improve their safety processes continuously, thereby reducing events and associated costs. By ensuring a safe working environment, employees are reassured of their safety and inculcate safe behavior. This improves compliance and enhances brand reputation. Documentation and reporting also help businesses with timely submissions.

To know more about how ComplianceQuest’s EHS can improve safety management in your organization and reduce the cost of safety, click here: https://www.compliancequest.com/lp/ehs/