Why safety is Important?

So what can safety do for you? The benefits of maintaining a safe work environment are many, but first and foremost, safety is about what you can do to protect your workers. “It’s the right thing to do. Employers should send their workers home in the same condition they came in. Why wouldn’t that be important to a company?” says Todd Detro, vice president of Safety Management Group’s owner services team.

But the practice of safety also brings financial benefits to the table. A safe work environment impacts a project’s bottom line both directly and indirectly. Costs associated with incidents, including lost costs, worker’s comp claims, insurance costs and legal fees are minimized in a safe work environment. So are the indirect costs that follow incidents, including the lost productivity that occurs when people turn their attention to dealing with an incident. “If you’re doing safety effectively in a business world, it’s going to relate to fewer schedule interruptions, which will minimize your costs,” says Mark Steinhofer, facilities lead safety advisor in Safety Management Group’s owner services team. “You’re not going to have to stop work because you run into a problem.”

On the flip side, a safe work environment boosts employee morale, which, in turn, increases productivity, efficiency and profit margins. “When people feel like they have a good, safe work environment, they feel like they can make a difference,” says Steinhofer. “There are fewer staff absences, less staff turnover and an improved quality of work.”

Implementing a safety program is a cost-effective decision for the company. “It’s the right thing to do financially, too,” says Steinhofer. He points out that lower injury rates lead to higher profit margins. “Evidence shows that companies who implement effective safety and health programs can expect to see their injury and illness rates reduced by 20 percent or more and a return of $4 to $6 for every dollar invested in the safety program,” he says. He adds that employee injuries account for about 6 to 9 percent of project costs on a job site without a safety program, as opposed to only 2.5 percent of project costs with a wellimplemented safety program.

The positive business benefits of safety extend beyond financials. A solid safety program can help protect a company’s reputation. “Lost time means poor service quality,” Steinhofer says. “This can lead to customer dissatisfaction and loss of future business.” Safety Management Group helps companies defend their hard-earned reputation by helping them improve their safety records.

Safety Management Group’s expertise also helps companies comply with federal and state worker-safety rules and satisfies insurance company requirements. SMG’s services can help owners anticipate and meet legal requirements for worker safety and identify situations that are likely to draw OSHA attention. Safety Management Group will also serve as a representative during regulatory inspections. The company’s experience in loss control prevention and working with insurance carriers can also help clients satisfy insurance requirements and lower their insurance costs.

No one can argue with the fact that workplace safety is important, yet it’s often unintentionally overlooked, leaving workers and others on the job site exposed to risk. Safety Management Group’s trained safety advisors can identify unsafe acts and conditions and provide practical solutions for minimizing those risks. Additionally, Safety Management Group’s safety professionals can help clients to develop a culture of safety on their job sites. The on- or off-site training that Safety Management Group provides can equip all the members of a construction team with the tools they need to perform their job safely, whether they need basic safety training or project-specific safety training. “Everyone has a piece in the safety puzzle,” says Detro. “We want every person on that construction team to know what their roles are regarding safety—the project manager, the foreman, the superintendent, and the field worker all have a responsibility. We lay that out up front.”