Whether accidents are a frequent occurrence in your warehouse or are few and far between, the fact of the matter is that these accidents are costing your company valuable time and money.
When it comes to workplace accidents and injury, there are two types of costs associated: direct and indirect.
Direct Costs
Direct costs are the expenses covered by insurance that are related to workplace incidents, for example workers’ compensation premiums and miscellaneous medical expenses that arise from workplace injury, which include doctor fees, hospital charges, cost of medication, future medical costs and ambulance services.
Indirect Costs
Indirect costs are less apparent and can quickly build up over a period of time, becoming a hole in your company’s pocket. These expenses out number direct costs and include investigation of accident, schedule delays, legal fees, training costs for new/replacement workers, damaged tools and equipment, as well as increased absenteeism.
Workplace accidents can quickly become a slippery slope for your company and can eventually lead up to poor customer service and customer relations. In addition to a decline in customer relations, these incidents have very real dollar signs attached to them. For example, the national average cost for non-lost-time injury is $7,000 while the cost is $28,000 for lost-time injury, while fatalities hold the highest cost of $980,000.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration requires that companies with 10 or more employees during each calendar year complete the appropriate OSHA injury and illness recording forms.
With the goal of maintaining a safe workplace environment for all employees and preventing accidents, OSHA believes that accurate injury and illness records will help curb the number of accidents that occur each year and lead to an overall decrease in yearly workplace incidents.
Recently OSHA has been turning up the heat on Record Keeping. Barclay offers an OSHA I2P2 Recordkeeping & Accident Investigation Training Seminar to update Safety Professionals on the ever changing rules. Interested? Click here to schedule training.
