Accidents do not affect Bottom-line – Is it so?

After a long gap, I’m constrained to write this article in wake of recent spur in accidents-fire, crane/building collapse, mine collapse etc. wherein many are losing lives apart from damage to property and environment.
The bottom-line of any business is net profit. Resources are deployed, operated, monitored, and coordinated in a way so as to maximise return on it as net profit. Of all these resources, human resource is considered to be very invaluable, expensive, dynamic yet very sensitive. The business that respect and care for this scarce resource, have been witnessed leading others in their respective fields. There are several ways to demonstrate respect and care of this scarce resource, however providing employee a safe and healthy workplace and ensuring their return to home without injury should find a place above all. As a high human caring business, safety of the employee should be foremost value and should be considered in the core of all planning.
However for many, Safety is limited to fulfilling mere legal obligation and compliance. For the management in such industry, safety is compromised for all other functions. The cost for accident for them is manageable and is less than what they perceived could be gained otherwise. It is the strong perception that adopting safety is not cost effective aspect. The poor condition of safety is because of lack of appreciation from top business managers which is further get support of peers having look-for to-bypass behaviors. The implementation of the law of land is also to blame for sluggishness in spite of the strict statutes because of biased enforcement from the concerning authority. All these situations collectively promote a safety less culture within the organisation because bottom line is not getting affected anyway.
This is the reason I think, why safety is not flourishing!
Contrary to the generality of this aspect, there are a few business – perhaps may be counted on finger tips, where workplace safety has a real concern and there business operations are planned keeping safety & health of employee at the fore. For them safety do not given a back–seat.
Following are indicators that reflect poor attitudinal behavior of the organisation towards Safety.
·      Non-performer is shifted to Safety department as punishment/disciplinary action.
·      Involving/assigning safety function in other than core safety activity
·      Setting ZERO accident targets as KPI and rewarding/recognizing safety function based on the outcome.
·      Limiting safety function to run safety programs of generic nature that has little or no effect on injury reduction. These may include monitoring PPE compliance at site, convening H&S meeting, holding toll-box meeting etc.
·      Poor resource allocation e.g. understaffed organisation, meagre budget and inadequate infrastructure.
·      Selection of safety person based on his/her capability of handling fatal accidents.
·      Not scheduled performance review and feedback session.
·      Safety function is made to explain the reason of non-closure of any safety issues.
·      Providing safety function a fewer opportunity for his/her self-development
·      Safety persons get very less chance to be a part of any business excellence meeting.
·      Rare appreciation to safety function in mass gathering like Town hall or open-house meeting so as to boost up moral of safety professional.

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