Taking Care of Business Means Taking Care of People

Whether running a global corporation or a corner store, your team of staff is your biggest asset. A core of good employees is the beating heart of any successful organization. Think about it. More often than not, your hired staff are the face of your business. They are the people your customer sees first and deals with most often. You rely on your employees to make you look good and to get the job done. 

And like any other asset, you need to protect your personnel. The right people can be hard to find, and staff training does not come cheap. Making sure your employees are safe on the job is required by law, but even if it wasn’t, it would still make total sense. 

Employee Safety is a Concern in Any Line of Business

In 2021, there were 34,200 lost time accidents reported in Alberta. And remember, those are just the ones that got reported. On top of that, there were 178 workplace-related fatalities.

Any way you look at it, those numbers paint a grim picture of lives interrupted or cut short. And that picture is more varied than you might think. The potential risk to someone who spends their day operating heavy equipment or travelling on remote roads is pretty clear. The risks may be less clear for a sales clerk or a real estate agent, but they exist nonetheless. What’s more, every one of those risk factors is magnified several times over when you’re looking at an employee who finds him or herself working alone, and working alone is increasingly common in almost any industry you care to mention.

So the human costs are grim. But let’s take a step back here and look at this from a different angle.  For a few minutes, let’s forget about the people involved. Failing to ensure the safety of a worker comes with a hefty price tag that can hit you where it hurts most, and that’s the bottom line. Some of those costs may be fairly obvious, but others are less so.

Cost of a Replacement Worker

Whenever an employee is off the job, there’s a cost to you. The work is still there even if your employee isn’t. That means you are either taking on and training an additional staff member or paying out overtime to some of your existing team.  Either way, that’s taking dollars out of your pocket.

Time off for Medical Appointments

Even after your employee’s back on the job, follow-up medical appointments are often needed. That will take them away from the job site for several hours, at the very least. 

Damage to Your Company’s Reputation

Accidents do happen, and they can happen to just about any of us.  But if your business develops a pattern that appears to show carelessness or poor organization, word will get out. That may make it harder for you to retain your customers and make it more challenging to recruit new employees. 

More Expensive Insurance

It goes without saying, really. You pay enough for insurance already. Adding a couple of accidents to your record will only make things worse. 

Reduced Productivity

Any time someone’s hurt on the job, there’s an inevitable knock on effect on their co-workers. Quite understandably, they become distracted, and things slow down. That can last for a few hours, a few days or longer. But any way you slice it, it costs you money.

Cost of Inspections and Investigations

When one of your team is hurt on the job, you have an obligation to take part in an investigation into what went wrong. That’s no bad thing if it’s going to help reduce accidents and injuries in the future. But it involves a lot of paperwork, and it’s going to cost you administration and management time. It will also interrupt the work of your other staff if they have to be interviewed as part of the process, as is often the case.

Damage to Employee Morale

This is a no-brainer. If your staff don’t feel that they’re properly looked after on the job, especially when working alone, morale can plummet. 

You don’t need us to tell you that low employee morale has been shown to reduce productivity and increase absenteeism, along with other problems.

Fines and potential prosecution. This is the worst case scenario, but it does happen.  First off, if you’re found to have been negligent or legally at fault, the fines can be financially crippling. And if you have to go to court, you can add legal fees on top of that. And bear in mind that you’ll incur those legal fees regardless of whether you’re convicted or not, so this is something you never, ever want to happen.

That list makes for depressing reading. But if you’re adequately prepared, you can take steps to make sure none of the really bad stuff happens to you. A workplace injury can occur no matter where you operate or what line of business you’re in. The thing that sets a well run company apart from the rest is simple. The best run companies will have plans and procedures to limit the impact when something goes wrong. 

By working with a monitoring service that checks up on worker safety and locates workers in an emergency, you can limit workplace accidents and the severity of those that do occur. When something does go wrong, every second counts. We work around the clock every day of the year, so you can be confident that we’ll be there when you need us.

Let’s Connect

To learn more about how Intercon Messaging can help you keep your people safe while they’re on the job give us a call at 866-665-2558 or click on the button below to schedule your no-obligation consultation.