6 Benefits of Maintaining Proper Health and Safety Practices
Thinking beyond compliances
Too often companies pay lip service when it comes to implementing health and safety standards across the organisation. They do it just because it is statutory; to avoid being penalised, prevent legal complications and maintain goodwill. But the time has come to rise above this shallow thinking; businesses must proactively strive to create a culture of safety that engages the entire workforce.
Health & safety from the business standpoint
When employees feel they are safe and protected, that their well-being is valued by the company management, they naturally reciprocate through their work. Their behaviour is reflected in multiple ways; punctuality, dedication, workmanship and loyalty. This change in attitude leads to higher performance and greater team synergy; employees are now better aligned with the company’s vision and strategic goals.
Hence it is always prudent from the business viewpoint to equip employees with the requisite skills to maintain workplace health and safety.
The 6 key benefits to the organisation
An organisation that invests time, finances and efforts for training its employees vis-à-vis workplace health and safety stands to gain in multiple ways. Here are the 6 key benefits:
Lower absenteeism
If employees stay healthy and do not get injured or hurt in the course of business operations, they will not stay away from work, which leads to lesser disruptions and better productivity.
Lesser churn
People tend to keep working for an organisation where an excellent safety management culture is in place. This means lesser churn, resulting in reduced costs for finding, hiring and training new employees.
Improved productivity due to high morale
When working conditions are conducive and management policies towards health & safety are employee-centric, employees feel more motivated and cheerful. The result is greater productivity.
Goodwill
Though a company is primarily known for the quality of its products or services, the brand image could be tarnished should there be any incidents and mishaps at the plant/factory/off-shore installation and is not manageable properly. Therefore, having proper HSE system with adequate risk assessment and will minimise the occurrences of such misfortunes and protects the brand’s reputation. Managing and mitigating risk effectively ensures the brand’s reputation stays intact.
Cost savings
Professional, systematic health and safety management translates into reduced cost in the form of low insurance premium. When aggregated over hundreds or thousands of employees, it turns out to be considerable and direct cost savings.
Legal shield
Incorporating the requisite health and safety practices offers protection to the company in the face of law suits and legal battles. It is often considered that implementing safety management within a company is expensive, if this is the mindset – then consider the costs of an incident, which in today’s prosecution arena can be huge!
Creating a win-win situation
As can be easily inferred, creating and nurturing a culture of safety augurs well for everyone. Maintaining proper health and safety practices at the workplace creates a win-win situation for both management and employees.
Safety is not a need to comply with; Safety is a need for sustainable workforce and a working culture that benefits the employee and the company.
To know how KB Associates can be your valuable partner in implementing proper health and safety practices in accordance to global standards, please contact us or visit our Health & Safety Consultancy Services page.
