Making safety your business By Carmen Daecher

As I have said before, the safety program in any company should be viewed from a dollars-and-cents point of view. You will get attention quickly if you talk about the profit of safety rather than its cost.

To do that, however, the first stop is to collect costs for each accident, injury or illness that occurs in your organization.

Some of the costs you want to look at are:

• Third-party costs, including property damage, injury and fatalities;
• Cost of injuries/illness to employees;
• Cost of vehicle repair;
• Cost of vehicle downtime;
• Cost of new or renewed personnel;
• Cost of hiring replacement personnel;
• Miscellaneous costs, such as the time to administrate an accident, the cost of investigators, costs for preparing and maintaining files, etc.

Remember to include insurance premiums as a miscellaneous item, even though it is not a minor one.

As you start to detail these costs, the cost of any accident, no matter its severity or its frequency, will be known, and your overall costs for accidents will become clear.

So where is the profit? You should develop strategies for reduction of accidents based upon this actual experience. As you develop those strategies, you can predict the decreased costs resulting from fewer accidents. Therefore, you will tailor your costs and your programs toward accident reduction that is less costly than accidents themselves. So the first benefit of looking at the costs of accidents is making intelligent, cost-effective decisions on how to reduce them - and define the savings associated with this reduction.

The second area of "profit" in safety programs is to identify and quantify costs associated with accidents that are being prevented as a result of current safety efforts. Is the use of personal protective equipment actually preventing accidents in your workplace? Has employee training prevented an accident or injury from occurring?

While this may not be as solid as actual dollars-and-cents expenditures, the most important effort of safety is to prevent accidents. Therefore, determining the dollars saved through prevention is critical. You want to be reasonable and fair in your definitions of accidents and injuries that are prevented, but it is important that you remind your organization with documented savings that prevention will always be the most important part of the safety program.

Finally, maintaining such data over time will become important. To be able to analyze changing frequencies and types of accidents will either justify or bring into question costs associated with accident and injury prevention. A more quantifiable feel for accident costs can be used by management when considering future insurance programs.

Will it be more cost-effective to go to a larger deductible based upon the cost of property damage and injuries? Historical data will be able to assist the organization in making the right decision.

By considering safety as a profit center and by using a dollars-and-cents format for developing programs and activities, you will be a better manager and will contribute to collective decision-making within the organization, rather than simply being impacted by it. Your value to the company as a safety manager will be more appreciated.

Safety is everyone's business, but it is yours to manage. From where I am sitting, if you manage it well and communicate in the dollar-and-cents language that other managers understand, your safety program will indeed pay dividends.

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