{"id":14962,"date":"2024-06-26T10:27:40","date_gmt":"2024-06-26T14:27:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eptura.wpengine.com\/?p=14962"},"modified":"2024-10-08T12:51:26","modified_gmt":"2024-10-08T16:51:26","slug":"how-to-cut-costs-carefully","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eptura.com\/discover-more\/blog\/how-to-cut-costs-carefully\/","title":{"rendered":"Occupational safety: How to cut costs carefully\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Facility and maintenance managers play important parts in keeping the workplace safe for employees and visitors. But occupational safety programs can quickly become complicated, especially when working across multiple buildings and locations. You need reliable, repeatable systems to share policies and procedures and capture information on accidents. With the right modern facility management software, you can protect people and profits.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What is occupational safety?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

Because safety is a multidisciplinary field that ties into local, state, and federal laws, it\u2019s hard to have one perfect definition that covers everything. But basically, occupational safety is the collection of theories and practices organizations use to prevent the hazards that cause injury.<\/span><\/p>\n

Everything from simple guardrails near cutting blades to complex fire suppression systems. Broadly, safety is all the equipment you install and the steps you take to ensure people don\u2019t get hurt.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And because safety is so important, most countries have governmental agencies in charge of making sure workers stay safe. In America, it\u2019s the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (<\/span>OSHA<\/span><\/a>), while Canada has\u00a0the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (<\/span>CCOHS<\/span><\/a>). In the United Kingdom, there\u2019s the Health and Safety Executive (<\/span>HSE<\/span><\/a>).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Looking at those names, it\u2019s\u00a0clear that there\u2019s more than just safety. There\u2019s also health.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s the difference between occupational safety and occupational health?\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While safety is closely tied to preventing accidents, health is broader, and can include everything from prevention of harassment to promotion of mental health and adoption of ergonomic equipment like chairs that prevent lower-back pain. Health can also cover things like programs to help employees quit smoking and start exercising more. \u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, when a technician works on a piece of equipment, safety includes ensuring they have appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) and access to relevant information and tools for safe lock-out\/tag-out procedures. Health covers ensuring they are not harassed while working and they don\u2019t have to move dangerously heavy objects to complete their tasks.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What are the benefits of workplace safety procedures?\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

There are a million good reasons to have a robust health and safety program in place, and it\u2019s easy to see why by looking at how accidents, even small ones, can quickly snowball into an avalanche of costly problems.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Imagine a maintenance technician is seriously injured while on the job. What are the immediate and long-term effects? Right away, and most importantly, that tech\u2019s life has changed, possible forever.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And the organization is looking at multiple additional costs. There could be a lot of expensive downtime during investigations by both internal teams and outside agencies. <\/span><\/p>\n

Depending on the outcome, there could be\u00a0<\/span>OSHA fines<\/span><\/a>\u00a0or large lawsuits to settle. When you\u2019re back at full production, you need to find and train a replacement technician, which can be hard if your department has a reputation for accidents. Reputational damage can extend to the rest of the organization, too. If the accident caused production delays, there are unhappy customers that the organization needs to win back, often with generous terms and discounts.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The National Safety Council (NSC) estimates for the <\/span>impact of preventable injuries<\/span><\/a> in 2022 include: <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n