IS OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH & SAFETY IMPORTANT?

What is Occupational Health and Safety ?

Occupational health and safety (OHS) is a branch of public health aimed at improving workplace health and safety standards. It studies injury and illness trends in the worker population and offers suggestions for mitigating the risks and hazards they encounter on the job. Every occupation has health or safety risks associated with it, and it is every employer’s responsibility to ensure that their employees can carry out their work as safely as possible.

Why is Occupational Health and Safety Important?

1. Improved health and safety performance

There’s absolutely no doubt that adopting a systematic approach to OHS management and using a specific system will make managing your business easier! Having a proper system in place will make your OHS management strategies much more effective. All of your employees will have a clear understanding of how to handle key activities, whether it’s reporting an incident, responding to an issue, or working through a problem. When every worker is clear about the precise protocol to follow and everyone uses the same approach every time, your organization’s OHS performance will improve.

With the right OHS management system in place, your organization will have a clear overview of every OHS-related activity that happens on your premises. You’ll have a clear, agreed-upon record of what happened, how it was responded to and what further actions were taken.

2. Reduced cost associated with accidents and incidents

If your organization currently has no OHS management system in place, you’ll be painfully aware of how expensive it can be to correct mistakes and problems. You see, without a system to track and monitor accidents and incidents, you have no formula for reducing the risks faced by your employees. Every time an accident occurs, your business will be on the back foot, at the mercy of the consequences like:

Staff compensation claims that push up your insurance premiums

The cost of hiring temporary staff to plug gaps in your workforce while the injured workers recover.

And more!

But there are other indirect costs too.

Your workforce is your business’ greatest asset: each accident and incident will dent staff morale.

When workers feel that their employer doesn’t take OHS management seriously, they’ll be less likely to engage with their work.

This has a significant knock-on effect when it comes to productivity. A Gartner survey found that workplaces with low morale typically have lower productivity levels.

If nothing else gets your attention, consider how low productivity will affect your organization’s bottom line. Not a pretty picture, right?

A formal OHS management system will help reduce the likelihood of incidents and accidents from occurring and this will, in turn, lower your organization’s costs of dealing with them.

3. Improved staff relations and morale

The third benefit of OHS management systems is that they increase employee satisfaction and help to improve staff relations and morale.

If your organization currently has no OHS management system in place, you may kid yourself into thinking that members of staff haven’t noticed.

But they probably have!

Employees will notice whether their managers are taking a genuine interest in their health and safety.

They may not articulate it, but you’ll notice it in their engagement levels and their on-the-job behavior.

At one extreme, organizations with no OHS management system in place may see employees engaging in unsafe behavior on the job, either intentionally or unintentionally. Without a solid safety culture, employees may put their own safety or the safety of others at risk.

All of this changes when a company invests in an OHS management system. Employees will start to feel more comfortable and secure as they’ll have a set of clear OHS practices in place. After completing their training, they’ll know the exact guidelines to follow in any situation, helping them gain confidence while at work. When you start implementing an OHS management system, you’ll notice that workers’ productivity and morale will improve, employee retention rates will increase and your organization’s growth will rise.

4. Improve business efficiency

Implementing an OHS management system is one of the best ways to improve the efficiency of your business.

Why?

Because it reduces your costs almost across the board.

An OHS management system can help you:

• Reduce the number of sick and ill days that your staff take
• Lower the number of temporary workers you need to hire
• Lower insurance premiums
• Increase staff morale and productivity
• Improve staff retention rates
• Reduce training costs (for new and temporary staff)

Improved efficiency SHOULD be a strong incentive for taking action and an OHS management system offers unbeatable advantages compared with having no system or one of limited effectiveness.

5. Improved public image and PR

Whoever coined the phrase “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” obviously never worked in PR for a multinational!

For modern organizations, serious health-related accidents and injuries DO become public and CAN cause irreparable harm to a company’s public image. When it comes to building brand appeal and gaining new customers, you’re swimming against the tide. The last thing your organization needs is a major incident to detract from your good work. Consumers are far less likely to trust companies that don’t take their employee’s health and safety seriously.

6. Lower insurance premiums

When most businesses start considering a formal OHS management system, one of their first considerations is cost. While cost is certainly part of the equation, it is important to understand how the outlay is offset by cost savings. We’ve already discussed the various ways that OHS management systems can save your organization money, such as by reducing employee turnover, lowering temporary workers’ hiring and training costs and driving down the cost of investigating accidents and incidents. But an important and often overlooked cost-saving can be lower insurance premiums.

In today’s litigation culture, insurance premiums are mandatory, but insurers will offer lower premiums if you can demonstrate that you are effectively controlling risks to your workers on your premises. If you can use an OHS management system to reduce injuries and illnesses by – say – 20 percent, this is valuable evidence that you can use when you come to renew your premiums. Your organization’s perceived risk is lower and this may result in cost savings through lower insurance premiums.

7. Easier access to finance

Gaining finance from banks and investors is never easy, especially in today’s challenging business climate. But an OHS management system is an important part of proving to potential investors that your organization is well-managed. There is strong evidence that banks and investors will be more willing to finance businesses that can show they are well managed.

With fewer accidents and injuries and a set of clear guidelines that help you respond to any incidents that occur, your company will have a healthier bottom line and an improved chance of winning investments that it may otherwise not.

8. Increased regulatory compliance

If there are two words that strike fear into the heart of most business owners, then these two may be it: ‘regulatory compliance’.

Regulations are increasingly stiff and the punishments are ever-fiercer.

If you have no OHS management system in place, the chances of unwittingly committing an offense are quite high, whether due to negligence or human error. A proper OHS management system will help all of your staff stay aware of current legal requirements. This improves your regulatory compliance and lowers the risk of you having to pay a fine.