Quality of Life and Productivity
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WELCOME |
We have touched on the costs to business of implementing health and safety in a number of previous newsletter articles. The subject has been brought to our attention once again with the publication of a new report by the Health and Safety Executive.
The contention of the report is a message that we often preach, namely that good health and safety is rarely a net cost to a business. It is perfectly reasonable to expect that improvements in health and safety performance go hand in hand with improved business performance. Businesses should not only look at their expenditure on health and safety, but they should compare these direct costs with those that are incurred from lost production, staff turnover, compensation claims, investigations, fines, prosecutions, management time and numerous other costs that arise when health and safety is neglected.
The pitfall we most frequently encounter is those firms that have played at health and safety rather than following a structured approach to the whole subject. Too often, the result of this approach is to incur the costs without realising the corresponding savings or productivity gains.
What is needed is a structured approach that is able to identify clearly where effort needs to be directed for best effect. If you don’t have your own in-house expertise, the answer is to contact an established consultancy that can demonstrate a good track record. They can help you maximise the effectiveness of your investment.
David Skews, (CEO)
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QUALITY OF LIFE AND PRODUCTIVITY |
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has recently posted a report on their web site in regard to the relationship between improved productivity and the quality of working life.
Clearly, from the Health and Safety Executive’s point of view, quality of working life is virtually synonymous with good health and safety practice, or at least they are very closely related.
The report has been prepared as the HSE’s response to an inquiry being conducted by the Work Foundation (previously known as the Industrial Society). The Treasury has defined the drivers to productivity growth as Investment, Skills, Innovation, Enterprise and Competition. The Work Foundation, for their part, has identified people as being central to these themes.
It is the HSE’s contention that discussions about business productivity have tended to ignore the impact of health and safety. Everyone understands that accidents as a result of poor health and safety can result in ill health, disability and even death. However, the full impact of such accidents on productivity has tended to be overlooked – such consequences, for example, as loss of productive capacity (which may be short term or long term) and loss of skills that have been developed and honed over many years.
It is difficult to demonstrate conclusively the extent to which business prosperity benefits from good health and safety or, conversely, that prosperous businesses have good health and safety because they are able to afford it. However, based on available evidence, the HSE report argues that there is clearly a virtuous circle (or cycle) in that a healthy and happy workforce is more productive, leading to increased investment in health and safety to reduce accidents, which in turn leads to further productivity gains.
The Health and Safety Executive has assembled compelling evidence to support their contention, from which they have drawn the following conclusions:
- The principles of good risk management, which leads to improved business competence, are the self same principles that are used when drawing up health and safety regulations
- Drawing on international sources, there is clear evidence for the link between health and safety performance, on the one hand, and improvements in business productivity on the other
- Businesses are seeing increasing incidence of absenteeism, degraded performance and long term losses to their workforce
- As a general rule, employers are often unaware of the adverse impact of such losses on the profitability of their businesses
- In contrast, genuine productivity gains can be realised by those businesses that invest in high performance health and safety practices
- However, the HSE also recognises that there needs to be a substantial shift in attitude for many organisations if they are to move on from simply attaining minimum legal compliance toward implementing health and safety best practice. For those organisations that make the transition, however, the rewards are well worth the effort
In effect, the Health and Safety Executive are throwing out a challenge to businesses to do the best they can for the welfare of their employees and, at the same time, do themselves some good in the form of increased productivity.
In other words, when an organisation is committed to health and safety best practice and implements it in a properly managed manner, the result is a win-win situation that benefits both the workforce and the organisation for which they work.
If you want to explore further what is involved in implementing health and safety best practice, then it's worth contacting us for further information. Perhaps you simply want a literature pack or, for more bespoke information, you may want to attend one of our briefings or talk to one of our Account Managers. Whatever you opt for, it costs nothing to talk but the benefits to be gained are well worth it.
See Concepts for a broader perspective on Managing Health & Safety
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David Skews, (CEO)
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EDP Health Safety & Environment Consultants Ltd
Lakeside, Alexandra Park, Prescot Road, St. Helens, Merseyside, UK
Telephone: +44(0)1744 766000
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