FEATURE
THE BOTTOM LINE:
Scaremongering about health and safety is a counterproductive process. It carries the potential to panic those making decisions and often leads to poor choices.
Health and safety decisions should always be built on evidence. A cursory glance at official HSE figures for costs associated with work-related accidents could be enough to send the most pragmatic of health and safety procurers running to their local PPE supplier.
In the UK alone, HSE statistics show the cost associated with workplace accidents as £4.9bn per year. Annually, there are over 475,000 occurrences of employees taking up to six days off work as a result of a workplace accident – and a further 154,000 occurrences of workers taking even longer – and that’s before we even consider the 140 or so fatalities.
The average cost of an accident ranges from £1.6m per fatality, to £7,500 per non-fatal injury. Clearly, these are figures that can damage, even devastate a business, whatever
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its size. But they perform the function of highlighting the very real need for health and safety best practice that greatly reduces the likelihood of accidents occurring in the workplace.
This isn’t scaremongering – it is the hard facts of health and safety at work – and every individual involved should be aware of them.
ACCIDENT AFTERMATH Let’s examine a typical non-fatal accident and the effects it will have on a business. A lightweight counterbalance forklift truck, travelling at 12kmph with a total load weight of 3,570kg impacts a piece of equipment at a 90° angle. This will transfer around 20,000 Joules of energy to the object – enough to damage the forklift, the piece of equipment and potentially injure the driver.
An employee who was working on the piece of equipment is lucky not to be seriously injured, but has suffered some injuries from the equipment becoming displaced and is traumatised.
THE REAL COST OF WORKPLACE ACCIDENTS
While some costs of a workplace accident are obvious, it can often be the hidden costs that are the most damaging - A-Safe explores the issue in more depth.
The repercussions on a business begin immediately as the costs start to accumulate with many employers worst nightmare: downtime.
A large-scale incident will likely halt productivity across a whole facility. In major automotive plants, it is estimated that downtime costs an average of £15,000 per minute, on a typical SME food packaging line, it costs around £24 per minute.
Over time, some production may be able to restart, but it may be weeks or months until maximum capacity is regained. Some orders may need to be cancelled. Perhaps overtime wages will need to be considered to cover lost production and procedures will need to be examined in time consuming detail – perhaps with the HSE in tow.
The obvious costs of maintenance, repairs or replacements for the vehicle and the equipment involved can vary wildly – but are likely to be significant. Depending on the severity of injuries to staff there may be a range of costs attached, including first aid treatment, off-work salary, new
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