Benefits of A Workplace Health and Safety Program

What Are The Benefits of Investing in Workplace Safety and OSHA Compliance?

Many small companies struggle to understand the importance and benefits associated with investing in a workplace safety program, especially if they’ve never experienced any related problems such as high injury rates or a failed OSHA inspection.

The problem is made worse by the common challenges small companies face when trying to navigate complicated and ever-changing mess of OSHA health and safety regulations, including lack of expertise, time and resources needed to keep up.

But for small businesses who operate in high hazard industries such as manufacturing or construction, it’s typically just a matter of time before problems begin to rear their ugly head.

These problems can include OSHA inspections which can result in huge fines and penalties, increased Worker’s Compensation premiums due to increased EMR, lost business opportunities from customers who don’t want to work with non-compliant vendors, wasted money and the list goes on.

It’s actually a very complicated subject, but at the end of the day investing in an OSHA compliance program just makes good business sense, and can prevent tragedy and a wide range of serious risks and liabilities.

Never forget that if your company exposes your employees to health and safety hazards, your company is required by Federal law to implement and manage an OSHA compliant health and safety program. In other words, building a safety program isn’t optional.

Having said all of that, there are many tangible benefits associated with investing in workplace health and safety program, and here’s a brief summary:

Reduced Risk:
- Reduced risk of serious employee injuries and fatalities. The numbers don’t like, tens of thousands of US workers get seriously injured and killed on the job every single year. Many of these tragedies are totally preventable and unnecessary.
- Reduced risk of huge OSHA fines and penalties that can run into the $10s or 100s of thousands of dollars.
- Reduced risk of civil and even criminal liabilities that can trigger when employees get seriously injured or killed on the job, and it can be proven that the company was negligent in managing health and safety requirements. These civil lawsuits can lead to settlements that can run into the millions of dollars, and criminal liabilities can result in major fines and even jail time.
Improve employee engagement & productivity: Employees notice and appreciate when their employer takes an active role in improving health and safety conditions at the company. This often leads to improved employee engagement and productivity as well as reduced turnover and absenteeism. Employees regularly rank “having a safe workplace” as a top 10 reason for job satisfaction.
Improve company culture All of the combined employee benefits associated with safety programs can adds up to an improved company culture. This can have wide ranging positive impacts on the bottom line.
Improve quality: It’s an established fact that improved health and safety performance equates to improved quality performance. Feel free to search the internet and you’ll find many supporting studies. In other words, if you want to improve quality then a great place to start is with safety.
Cut costs: US companies lose an average of $140 billion every year to all of the direct and indirect costs associated with workplace injuries. This includes medical costs, accident investigations, legal fees, damaged equipment and more.
Growth: There’s often no better way to “move your company up the competitive food chain” then by building a strong safety program. If you want to do business with bigger companies and customers who demand safety performance from their vendors, then a safety program can become a major growth accelerator.
Protect Your Reputation: Companies who have serious injuries, fatalities, or failed OSHA inspections often suffer major PR and reputation damage and embarrassment when news spreads on-line, in trade journals and local newspapers.

Building a strong safety program has never been easier with our turn-key and affordable outsourced OSHA health and safety compliance services.

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By Russell Carr|2022-02-22T17:34:00-05:00June 17th, 2018|OSHA Texas Laws & Regulations, Safety Training, Texas OSHA Compliance|Comments Off

About the Author: Russell Carr

How A Sales Guy Transformed Into An Environmental, Health & Safety Expert & Advocate For Small Businesses I've spent my entire 30+ year career working within the manufacturing and “industrial services” sectors. The first 15 years of my career focused on sales of hazardous materials related products and services to the manufacturing sector, then for the last 16+ years transitioned into entrepreneurship, founding 3 small industrial services related contracting businesses. As you’ll see below, running these companies eventually lead me to found yet a 4th business, but more on that in a minute…. Here’s a brief description of the first 3 companies: Berg Environmental Services, Inc.: hazardous waste disposal & transportation services, founded in August of 2003 3rd party wind energy operations & maintenance services provider to utility scale wind farms throughout the US, founded in September 2007 3rd party oil & gas exploration & production services provider, founded in August of 2011 Each of these companies operated in extremely dangerous working conditions and exposed my employees to a wide range of serious health & safety hazards on a daily basis. To complicate matters, 2 of the companies also exposed the environment to significant potential harm. In other words, I learned very early the critical importance of managing environmental, health and safety issues so as to ensure the safety of our employees and the environment, as well as minimizing related risks. But I also learned how incredibly difficult and challenging this endeavor can be due to the wide range of complicated and continually changing environmental, health and safety rules and regulations that impacted the companies. To summarize the challenges: First I had to determine which regulations applied to each company, then I had to build compliance programs to meet those regulations, and finally I had to ensure that the programs were being managed and followed by our staff on a daily basis. All while trying to run and grow 3 profitable businesses…. It was overwhelming and I always struggled to keep up. To make matters worse, throughout this time I also witnessed the devastating price that companies, management and ownership can pay for failing to manage EHS compliance. This included seeing one of my hazardous waste management clients get sent to jail over environmental issues, another client’s management team threatened with jail time, a direct competitor get fined $378,000 by OSHA fine after an employee was nearly killed, and many others face major fines and penalties. Full disclosure, one of my companies got fined by OSHA at one point, & another was cited by TCEQ, so I know how it feels. In summary, I learned first hand how incredibly difficult it is for small companies to manage EHS compliance due to a common lack of the critical expertise, time and resources that are needed to keep up, and how this situation then ends up exposing them to these potentially catastrophic risks that can literally destroy lives and businesses. This later inspired me to found my 4th company, Berg Compliance Solutions in 2012, which is dedicated to helping other small businesses, and business owners, to manage EHS compliance and risk. Education BA, Philosophy, University of Colorado, Boulder, December, 1990. Summary of Professional Experience & Qualifications: 30+ years serving the manufacturing & industrial services sectors 30+ years of sales and marketing experience 16+ years as small business owner & entrepreneur: Founded and operated 4 small businesses since 2003. Environmental, Health & Safety Compliance & Program Related: 19 plus years of hazardous waste management including EPA, TCEQ & RCRA regulations 8 years of DOT/FMCSA compliance experience, including hazardous materials transportation 8 years of combined experience implementing and managing OSHA health and safety compliance programs for 2 high risk energy services businesses Successfully implemented and gained ISO 9001 Quality Management Certification and OHSAS 18001 (Occupational Health & Safety Advisory Service) Certification for wind energy maintenance business. Regulatory Enforcement Related Experience: Served as expert witness in criminal environmental compliance enforcement cases Superfund-CERCLA OSHA enforcement inspections, investigations and resolution in following industries: industrial services, manufacturing & construction. TCEQ enforcement inspections, investigations and resolution in manufacturing.

Benefits of A Workplace Health and Safety Program