Why Is Health & Safety So Important?

As a business owner, it is essential to understand and adhere to your legal obligations, but just why is health and safety so important?

Here we outline the top 3 reasons….

1. Protecting you and your employees
By far the most important aspect of health and safety is to ensure the safety of yourself, your employees, and those who visit your premises.

All work exposes people to potential risks from the obvious – dangerous machinery, toxic substances – to the not so obvious e.g. stress or RSI. As a company owner it is your responsibility to recognise these risks and put in place measures to avoid incidents.

2. Financial cost implications
There are over 640,000 workplace injuries every year; 1.8m cases of ill health caused by work and 27m working days lost due to work-related illness or injury.

Clearly this is going to have an effect on productivity which will obviously impact your bottom-line.

And, of course, if you have been negligent, you will be investigated by the HSE which, dependent on the severity of the incident, could result in significant fines or even jail!

3. Negative Publicity
Whether through word-of-mouth or in the press, having a poor health and safety record can generate negative publicity, which will have an impact on your business.

Recruiting the best candidates to join your company, and generating new business, will become a harder task if you have an investigation or fine from the HSE hanging over your head.

If you would like assistance to ensuring you are health and safety compliant please contact us.