What Are The Risks Associated With Companies Not Focussing On Health And Safety?submitted on 5 January 2021
Health and safety in the workplace are becoming more and more of a focal point as employers are working hard to ensure that they are keeping their employees safe. In most business’s, this has now formed a formal Key Process Indicator where they will monitor lost time injuries and “near misses”. The consequence of a health and safety event could be catastrophic and here are some of the things that could be impacted.
Injury
Unfortunately, there are injuries that happen in the workplace on a daily basis and the frustrating thing about this is that the majority of these can no doubt be avoided. Ensuring that the employees have been on a health and safety awareness course will go a long way to help ensure that the employees are more aware and provided with the correct guidance on how to prevent accidents. The Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) that employees should use and when they should be used is covered in these types of courses.
In addition to this, the importance of completing preventative injury measures such as risk assessments are also touched in these sorts of courses. This allows people to assess circumstances in which the employees are working in and making sure that they put in the correct preventative measures in place to greatly reduce an accident.
Financial
If an employee has an injury at work then it is likely that they could hold the company to account for this, which could mean financial consequences. It is therefore really important that any company thinks about this in advance and put as much preventative measures in place to avoid the accident in the first place. The safety courses are part of this journey where if an employee chooses to be non-compliant and work in an unsafe way after you have trained them, then they are less likely to be able to hold the company to account and look for financial compensation. The cost of these types of courses are pennies compared to what could be the cost to a company if they are taken to court. This could also include death of an employee as a result of the companies negligence where the payout would be significant.
Reputational
Sometimes, what can be more important to companies is the reputation they have towards health and safety. Companies that do not put this at the top of their list could have high injury rate, poor morale in teams, and high turnover of staff. In addition, even the smallest of companies could reach the press if they are not taking care of their employees in this respect. Customers to the business may hesitate doing business with the company if their reputation on health and safety is not credible.
Summary
As health and safety becomes far more of a priority for companies, employees and companies, it is important to ensure people arm themselves with the right toolkits in order to prevent accidents and be aware of the health and safety regulations within the industry they work in. Health and safety courses are something that can support this significantly.
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