Since the early 1990′s, most companies have got their act together and decreased their workplace injuries (see chart).  After all, it’s a no-brainer that workplace safety accidents cost businesses lots of money each year.  And from a human perspective, it’s always a good idea to look after people.

Yet, many companies around the globe often forget about the real costs of an accident preferring to cut spending on safety training and equipment.

Let’s take a look at some different viewpoints on the real cost of workplace safety to an organisation:

1. The Liberty Mutual Workplace Safety Index report states that improving workplace safety is a key strategy for reducing direct costs resulting from workplace injuries. The direct costs that are stripping businesses of their profits include medical expenses, workers’ compensation payments and costs for legal services.   Direct costs are just the beginning of the ‘price’ of an unsafe working environment. Workplace accidents trigger a range of indirect costs including repairs to damaged equipment and property, hiring and training of replacement personnel, as well as costs associated with lower employee morale and absenteeism that is common in a work site that is considered unsafe.
2. While across the Pacific Ocean, Ian Woods, a senior business analyst at AMP Capital Investors was quoted as at a Safe Work Australia event that “From an investors’ perspective, we actively consider OH&S performance in our investment decisions, as we believe it is a good measure of management quality in many high-risk industries”.  Woods argues that investors now cannot ignore the cost of workplace injury as it is passed on to Australian employers. The average workplace injury costs 6 percent of profit. In the construction industry, the total workplace injury costs borne by workers, employers and the community is equivalent to a staggering 98 percent of the industry’s operating profit.
3. While Professor Patrick Hudson, based at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands was also quoted as saying “I have an estimate that a company may be losing up to 10 per cent of its turnover as a result of poor OHS and E (occupational health, safety and environment) performance…when you have a shutdown, you lose production, and you just add it up,” Prof. Hudson said

Gary Gregg, executive vice president of Liberty Mutual’s Commercial Markets sums it all up by remarking “There is a clear link between workplace safety and a company’s performance”.

But who is really responsible for workplace safety?

Research undertaken by Missouri Employers Mutual Insurance revealed that 95. 7% of those interviewed stated that the responsibility for creating a safe work environment belongs to management.

The bottom line is that companies need to assess their risk situation and to educate employees about how to keep themselves safe.

For organisations with a profit and humanitarian focus, education and safety training video packages are a wise investment in reducing business risk since they protect the most important business asset of all. . . human capital.

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"Warm up for work" Program run by a Prime Health Group exercise physiologist

EHS Today recently reported on a survey undertaken by Buck Consultants called “Working Well: A Global Survey of Health Promotion and Workplace Wellness Strategies”.

The global study analyzed responses from more than 1,100 organizations representing 10 million employees in 45 countries.

It found that improving productivity by keeping employees healthy and working is emerging as the top business objective.  As a result, company wellness programs are very popular for businesses worldwide.

Don R. Powell, PhD., president and CEO, American Institute of Preventive Medicine, pointed out that successful employee wellness programs receive an average return on investment (ROI) of $3.48 to 1 due to reduced health care costs and $5.82 to 1 due to reduced absenteeism, making them worth considering.

“HR managers should consider issues such as maximizing employee participation, involving dependents, teaching wise consumerism as well as online employee wellness programs that manage chronic diseases,” Powell said.

Not surprisingly, the Wellness Study found that across the world, the top work health concern was stress.  Although, in the US the top health concerns were lack of exercise and poor nutrition.

At the Health and Productivity Forum in February 2009, Ron Loeppke from Alere discussed the relationship between health, productivity and business strategy.  He discussed the results from the largest multi-employer study which confirm that the health of the workforce is inextricably linked to the productivity of the workforce and, therefore, to the health of the bottom line. In the study, productivity losses from absenteeism and presenteeism, combined with direct medical costs, amounted to four times the direct medical costs alone.

But how important are wellness programs in Australia?

A recent article in the Sunday Herald Sun (Jan 3, 2010), mentioned how the majority of Victorian workers are in need of medical attention with builders and drivers being labeled the state’s unhealthiest employees.

According to results from the WorkHealth occupational check-up program, more than half of the 14,000 employess that have been tested  are at “high risk” of serious health problems. Incidentally, more than 50 per cent of people who registered for the WorkHealth program since July 2009 rated their health as “excellent”.

Workers found to be at greater risk were in the transport, storage and construction industries, with more than 2 in 3 staff found to be in high risk categories.  This includes conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.

Karyn Foote from Prime Health Group, an Endorsed Service Provider with WorkHealth  says “Our clients are now combining workplace health assessments, with health & wellness initiatives and online wellness programs. This combination is engaging those staff that typically don’t participate in health and wellness activities, resulting in better staff retention and a happy, healthy and productive workforce”.

For more information about getting a health assessment for your company visit Prime Health Group or contact WorkHealth.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Following up from my last blog post, How to Evaluate the effectiveness of a Training video, I though it best to show a safety training video that’s well, crap!

This is quite an extraodinary example of how to not make a training video.

It’s more of a horror health and safety movie that focuses on educating through fear.

It does this through lots of gore, fake blood and workplace accidents that are too implausible to believe (my favourite is the nail flying through the air into a person’s eye).  And of course, lots of bad acting and ridiculous music.

As a video producer, it makes me really embarrased about the sort of videos that our industry makes (okay, it was a long time ago, but it should never have been given the go-ahead).  But it’s pretty easy to work out that the scriptwriter/producer must have believed that safety is boring, so let’s make it more entertaining by scaring people.  This is another reason why not to get your training video made by wannabe film directors!

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According to an article by Steve Osborn in The Safety & Health Practitioner June 2007, formal job induction training must deal with performing specific tasks safely, information about duty of care (both the company and workers) along with standard emergency procedures.

In particular management expectations with respect to health and safety need to be addressed along with certain standards of behaviour being made a condition of employment.

In this article, it was found that staff need to be inducted but also refreshed annually.  More importantly, business leaders should be involved and be seen to be involved.

As mentioned in my previous blog post, company-specific stories are a useful means of communicating the firm’s history, traditions, and values.   This technique can also be skillfully transferred to show new employees how to do their jobs safely and correctly by talking about how others have done their job in the past.  It has also been found to be an effective communication method to change poor behaviour or attitudes within companies about the importance of safety.

In order to use corporate story-telling in your company, think about some examples where a staff member has worked safely and avoided an incident by thinking ahead.  Was their an employee who worked safely despite his colleagues urging him to do otherwise that resulted in an accident being avoided?

Stories frame information so that it is meaningful, memorable and understandable.  They provide a power tool for communication, problem solving and perpetuating important company values.  Video storytelling is a great way to communicate your company stories.

Can you think of ways to include storytelling in your inductions?  What legendary stories do you have in your organisation?

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