Let’s be clear – health and safety training carries critical importance for your employees. Most businesses realise this, but they may not realise that good health and safety training can also help their bottom line. These days, the cost of providing such training to your employees is relatively low. You will not have to spend an exorbitant amount of money on training in order to reap the benefits. Here, we’ve assembled 7 ways health and safety training can benefit your business.
1.Better occupational health
Better training allows you to quickly improve the occupational health & safety of your workforce, thereby keeping accidents and injuries low. Fewer incidents equals fewer disruptions to your business. Any disturbance to your normal operations can become expensive, resulting in missed deadlines and disgruntled customers. If your employees are exposed to unnecessary high voltage discharge with ineffective safety controls, then a safety enclosure might help keeping them safe.
When you follow occupational health & safety guidelines, chances of disruptions are lowered and your business can operate at a steady pace. In short, proper investment in health and safety training assists the smooth operation and steady growth of your business.
2.Reduced liabilities
Beyond petty inconveniences to production schedules or operation deadlines, any accident on company premises can quickly become quite expensive. Even with workplace compensation insurance, legal costs can be enormous. Between the tangible costs of insurance payouts, compensation, and lost man-hours, there are the intangible costs to your company’s reputation among other businesses and within its own employees.
All of these costs can be minimised with the help of proper health and safety training. Good training reduces incidents and decreases liabilities. It allows you as an owner or manager to focus on your business rather than focusing on potential liabilities. And again, it will have a direct impact on the bottom line of your business.
3.Enhanced productivity via employee morale
There is an assurance that comes from working in an appropriately safe environment. If your know that your company takes the safety of its employees seriously, they can be more confident and motivated at work. In turn, good employee morale can equate to higher productivity, and thus more profits down the road.
Company morale can be difficult to measure, making this benefit of increased training a difficult one to properly assess. Nevertheless, happy employees are generally more productive ones, and the added benefit of increased employee retention can further improve your company’s reputation and opportunities for growth.
4.Compliance with health and safety guidelines
Every country has proper health and safety guidelines by which every business needs to abide. When you do not provide adequate health and safety training to your employees, you risk breaking those guidelines and incurring heavy penalties. If those violations result in an accident or loss of life, even your business license can get canceled. The cost of failing to follow required training and safety guidelines can be huge.
Following proper safety protocols also sends the right message to potential clients, assuring them that you take all rules and regulations seriously. Nor is it an impossible task to stay up-to-date and in compliance with the numerous standards. There are suites of health and safety software and safety inspection software to making conforming with current regulations easier than ever.
5.Building credibility
Any accident can bring a lot of negative publicity and affect your business directly. Just a short list of damage which can be caused by inadequate safety training includes:
- Accidents
- Loss of life
- Fire
- Lawsuits due to injuries
- Failure during government inspections
The resulting negative publicity can ruin the reputation of your business. Once damaged, it can be a long and expensive process to rebuild your company’s reputation. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as the saying goes; safeguard your current reputation by ensuring that your employees receive adequate health and safety training.
6.Reducing insurance and legal costs
Any accident or loss of life can result in significant legal fees for your business, regardless of where the fault for the accident falls. You will likely have to bear substantial legal costs. As mentioned previously, there can be costly penalties if the courts decide you have been negligent, and insurance premiums are likely to rise no matter the circumstances. The best way to reduce these costs is to prevent them altogether by providing proper health and safety training to your employees.
7.Better employee retention
Employees always prefer a safe workplace. On the work floor, they can easily judge if all the safety guidelines are in practice or not. With the demand for skilled employees and workers increasing, employees have greater flexibility to choose a safer company. The less training you give, the more unsafe the workplace, and the higher your employee attrition rate is likely to be. On the other hand, when you impart proper health and safety training, you can retain loyal and skilled employees.
So, instead of cutting down on the extra cost of health and safety training, you need to look at the long-term benefits. When you regularly conduct health and safety training to your employees, your business can benefit in more ways than one. The long-term benefits far outweigh the costs. It is always advisable to be on the right side of the law which puts the responsibility of imparting such training on the business owner.
