A Slippery Customer: Workplace Accidents And Its Real Cost

The real cost in business is hard to tally up. The real cost when it comes to a workplace accident is very easy to tally up. The detrimental effect someone having a fall in your place of work is a very real risk every day. It’s very difficult keeping a business on track in the best of times, but a member of staff having a moment of inattention while they’re working at a machine could cost them, and you, a lot more than you bargained for.

An employee suffering an injury means that the first big bill is the medical one, which can be in the area of $1000, but the overall costs will be a lot more. The area in which the accident happened may need investigation, and the place will have to be shut down while this happens. This costs you precious time, and it could be days before that area gets back to work properly. And the work being done to investigate the incident means that those people are not doing their normal work which can cause delays in processes. The other big impact it will have on you as a company is the cost of your insurance premiums will go up as a result of the one injury, and it is a cost that you could see reflected in your premiums years after the incident took place! And the ability to actually locate client work may suffer as a result of what could be perceived as unsafe working conditions.

And although these impacts are all from a business side, have you thought about how the worker will react to this? Your employee may feel that they have been treated unfairly in the whole situation, and will go down the personal injury law firm path to make sure they get what they feel they deserve out of the situation, and they are well within their rights to do this. This means you will have to find more funds to hire your own defense, not to mention finding the time to go through the legal process, which will be to the detriment of your business overall. If the overall cost of the injury is $10,000, this means that you will have to make up $10,000 in productivity somewhere, either through additional work or financial support. But that is if your profit margin is 0 percent! A 10 percent profit margin from that $10,000 means $100,000 of extra work! The impact of one injury on a workplace is huge.

While the true cost of an employee injury can go well into the 1000’s if you’re not careful, it begs the question, are you doing enough to make sure your employees are motivated and safe in their workplace? Big companies are very on it when it comes to health and safety, and you should be too. Preventing an accident by investing in workplace safety methods and educating your staff in the ways of health and safety will work out a lot cheaper than the excessive costs that come with one simple accident.   

Photo by Jakub Zak | Shutterstock