How does health and safety affect a business?
Health and safety is crucial to any functioning business because of the costs involved if things go wrong. It will cost you financially, reputationally, personally, and professionally so the investment in proper health and safety massively outweighs the hazards and disasters that could occur otherwise.
This article is designed to highlight exactly how health and safety affect a business and hopefully makes you question what you’re doing in your business and how you might be able to improve.
We are Business Safety Solutions and we’ve been a tried, tested, and trusted health and safety consultant for a number of years. Health and safety is vital to any business as it protects staff, visitors, and anyone who encounters the organisaton.
In some cases, they’re also a legal obligation too. An example of a law that has been in place for a number of years is The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Despite the regulations in place, you are also responsible for protecting people and so should be taking it seriously anyway.
Health And Safety – How It’s Changed & Affects Businesses
The importance of health and safety has grown over the past few years and now includes more than ever. Traditionally, health and safety have involved the obvious risks and hazards and how to avoid them.
For example, on a building site, you must wear goggles, a hard hat, and steel-toe cap boots in order to avoid and protect against materials, falling objects, or tools. Nowadays, there’s much more consideration in health and safety which, we feel, is for the better.
Mental health, physical health in an office from a posture perspective, and much more are now built into company health and safety plans.
Generally, the expectation from a health and safety perspective has grown which is good because businesses are now more often than not, caring more about everyone associated with the business or organisation.
The consequences of not having a thorough health and safety policy and set of procedures are simply not worth the risk.
There are a few reasons why health and safety directly affect your business, so let’s get straight to the point.
Legal Complications
Firstly, if someone gets injured at work because of something that could be prevented, you could have a lawsuit on your hands.
This is a financially and emotionally draining process that you will want to avoid at all costs. It’s also worth mentioning that health and safety is an ongoing process that needs monitoring and updating regularly. Areas of work change all the time for various reasons.
There might be office space adaptations or a factory might get a new piece of equipment. As these changes happen, you need to be reviewing your health and safety policies and procedures to see if they’re still fit for purpose.
Your Responsibility
Another reason why health and safety affect your business is that you have a responsibility both ethically and for larger companies, a corporate social responsibility to have employee and visitor interests at heart. You do not want to be responsible for a horrific accident at your premises.
On a lighter note, if you react well from a health and safety perspective, your employees, clients, customers, and visitors will take notice.
If people feel safe in a building, they will be more likely to enjoy being there which can contribute to decreasing absenteeism and increasing staff retention. Not to mention levels of productivity and savings on insurance and claims can be made too.
Contact Us Today
In summary, we cannot emphasise enough the importance of health and safety for a business. There are regulations, laws, and responsibilities in place for a reason. You ultimately need to make sure you’re adhering to all these things, keeping everyone safe who steps foot on your premises.
The repercussions of not being adequately safe are simply not worth thinking about. If you need to review your health and safety policies or need some professional advice, get in touch with us here at Business Safety Solutions or check out our dedicated service page here.
It all starts by contacting us which you can do in a number of ways. You can give our team a call directly on 01244 455277 which we monitor regularly. You can also use the contact form on our website.
