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  7. Why Do Employers View Health and Safety Differently?

Why Do Employers View Health and Safety Differently?


Introduction

An old black and white picture of factory workers

Throughout history different owners and managers of businesses employing workers have approached the issue of health and safety in very different ways in terms of how much care they have for their employees. The introduction and subsequent increases and amendments to health and safety legislation have forced the majority of business owners and managers to take health and safety seriously. The very real threat of heavy fines or even criminal prosecution in serious cases means that even those managers who hate and firmly disagree with the restrictions and procedures that come with health and safety requirements will make sure that these safeguards are in place to prevent harm coming to their workers.

But even before any legislation was introduced, or at the very least just a bare minimum, there were some owners and employers who went far beyond any minimum legislative requirements and actively sought to create a safe place of work for their employees even though it meant more inconvenience to them and potentially lower profits. Why only potentially? See some of the reasons below.

So why did these employers do this, when there was no legal requirement to do so? There are a number of potential reasons.



Just a Nice Person

Not every person who owns a business will be out to get every last penny of profit no matter who gets hurt. Particularly when thinking of factory owners during the Industrial Revolution, the stereotypical image is of the profit-driven wealthy gentleman who cared little if a person was seriously injured or killed, even if it was a child, so long as profit levels remained high.

However, even in this period there were factory owners who actively sought to take steps which reduced the dangers faced by their workers, improve their working conditions and even improve their overall lives. Typically this was driven by religious beliefs, with two of the most famous examples - the Cadbury brothers in the late 19th century and Joseph Rowntree at the beginning of the 20th century - being Quakers whose belief that everyone should be treated equally motivated them to improve the conditions and lives of everyone employed by them. This led to many improvements, including:

  • Affordable Housing
  • Leisure facilities such as a swimming pool and playing fields
  • Free education
  • Free medical and dental provisions
  • Pension funds for workers
  • Fair wages
  • Actively improving the safety, welfare and working conditions of the factory workplace

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Preventing Lost Output

The traditional view is that to maximise profits an owner must pay out as little money as is physically possible. This means spending absolutely nothing if at all possible other than on premises, equipment and supplies; so things like providing health and safety training or introducing measures to protect and prevent harm coming to employees is most definitely out. Employees are viewed as almost deserving of being hurt or killed if they do not watch what they are doing, with it being an inconvenience for the owner in the form of lost time whilst people tend to the affected person and afterwards a replacement found for them.

In large factories, an incident can be seen by many people, stopping all work for quite a period of time. When large numbers of people and dangerous machinery was involved, these accidents could happen quite frequently. Clever owners realised that a little bit of money spent on health and safety to reduce the likelihood and therefore the frequency of these accidents would often be recouped many times over thanks to output and productivity being maintained. Even relatively cheap and simple measures such as the installation of protective guards over moving machinery parts could help to prevent many episodes.



Preventing Staff Turnover and Attracting Good Employees

Similar in some ways to the example of lost output above, staff members who leave will also cause disruption to a business, particularly a manufacturing business which relies upon output and the bulk production of low margin goods.

Centuries and even decades ago, workers often had little choice but to simply accept whatever conditions were provided by the one and only employer of the local area. Nowadays though with so much choice available in terms of occupations and competitors in the same industry, any company which does not appear to take the health and safety of its staff members seriously or provide suitable welfare facilities will quickly find that those employees will search for alternative jobs elsewhere and leave. This will force a company into having to constantly spend time and money on recruitment costs and training a new starter on how to do the job. Again, a little bit of money spent on health, safety and welfare can end up saving much more in the long run if these costs are avoided. Additionally, employees who have been performing a task for a long time become much quicker at it, thus increasing output and production. Losing them and replacing them with a brand new starter will forgo this until they become just as proficient at the task, if indeed they are ever able to match the ability level of their predecessor.



Financial

These days, employees who suffer a workplace illness or injury will often sue for compensation. As well as it being a legal requirement, companies must comply with health and safety legislation in order to minimise the chances of a successful claim. Even so, an unsuccessful claim will often cause disruption and financial costs to the company having to defend it. As such, the best course of action is to do everything it can to prevent accidents and incidents, thereby eliminating the potential for an employee to claim compensation for anything.



Conclusion

So there are actually many reasons for managers and owners of a business to actively promote a health and safety culture within their business, invest in safety and protective features, and provide health and safety training for their employees, other than being told to do so by the government in the form of mandatory legislation and regulations. Whilst attitudes and methods of working may have changed greatly over the last 200 years or so, there has always been, and continues to be, significant benefits for a business in ensuring the health and safety of its workers, over and above what is demanded by the law of the land.



Health and Safety Objectives

A set of health and safety objectives will not only give an organisation a clear list of things to be done in specified time frames, but will also allow it to easily prioritise those which are more urgent than others. No matter how large, no business or organisation has unlimited resources. This means that with regards to health and safety, as in the other areas of the business, objectives must be prioritised to allocate resources to the most important or most pressing one(s) first.

For most companies, the main objective will be to comply with all relevant legislation that applies to it in its home country and in the countries in which it operates. A failure to comply with health and safety legislation can result in expensive fines and in some serious cases even imprisonment for those in charge.

When deciding on health and safety objectives, those high risk activities which can cause the most amount of damage or illness to a person should be given the highest priority, and the majority of resources allocated to addressing these issues. This may even mean introducing temporary measures until a permanent solution can be implemented. These temporary measures can include operating at a reduced speed or using more time-consuming/expensive/inferior production methods.

Health and safety objectives can be set using a 'top down' or 'bottom up' approach. In a top down approach, objectives are set in the boardroom by senior management and then communicated downwards to workers. Senior management will know what resources are available across the whole organisation and can allocate to different departments accordingly.

The disadvantage of a top down approach is that senior managers sat in the boardroom at head office may not have an accurate or complete picture of the specific risks workers on the shop floor are facing. To combat this, a bottom up approach allows those who are actually facing the risks to determine the objectives with regards to what health and safety protection and prevention measures are needed. These are then presented to senior management who can then approve or reject the proposals. In reality, these two approaches meet somewhere in the middle, with senior management setting guidelines and consultation with workers undertaken to come up with objectives and the appropriate safety measures.



How Health and Safety Can Be at Odds with Other Objectives

Rather than a specific topic in isolation, health and safety has an impact upon pretty much every aspect of a company's operations. There will not (or at least there should not) be a task, function or activity which is undertaken in the workplace without first assessing the possible dangers and taking the appropriate relevant action necessary to reduce the risk down as far as is reasonable practical. This risk can be to the health and safety of people - both direct employees of the company and those visitors or members of the public who happen to be in the vicinity - as well as the risk of damage to the surrounding environment.

As health and safety has a bearing upon every activity, it will unfortunately usually be at odds with other objectives and tasks performed insofar as increasing the time taken to complete something or taking away resources such as money which could have otherwise been spent on developing and improving a different facet of the business. This can make many managers bristle whenever the words health and safety are mentioned.

Companies often struggle to balance the needs of the business (which will nearly always be to produce as much profit as possible if it is a commercial company), and the necessary actions to protect harm coming to people or the environment. The overwhelming urge to make or raise profits will tempt many managers into sacrificing health and safety in order to get tasks completed quicker or reduce spending on costly safety features. To combat this, governments around the world have introduced comprehensive, and sometimes extremely complicated, legislative requirements in order to force company managers and directors to put these protective measures in place and actively take steps to significantly reduce the probability of a person or the environment coming to harm as a result of the business's activities. Being told what to do in their own businesses by the authorities can also make many managers become indignant and even be actively rebellious against these imposed requirements. Not only does this risk the wrath of health and safety inspectors, but more importantly can put the lives of workers and the public at risk.



Short-Term Pain for Long-Term Gain

Another reason that health and safety can be at such odds with other objectives is that managers sometimes only focus on the short terms consequences of actions rather than looking at the long-term benefits. As far as health and safety is concerned, a positive health and safety culture combined with a well-trained workforce and high level of safety features can not only result in staff having to take far fewer days off through injuries or ill-health caused by their work duties, but are also likely to be far happier and more motivated if they feel safe at work and that management has their interests at heart. This will make them more productive and reduce levels of staff absenteeism from other reasons such as skipping the odd day here and there through a lack of desire to come to work.

Managers need to stop thinking about health and safety as an obstruction which hinders progress or reduces profit levels, but rather see it as something which can benefit employees, who in turn should be more motivated, more productive, less inclined to seek better employment opportunities elsewhere and take fewer days off.

In addition to the financial benefits for the company mentioned in the paragraph above, having a comprehensive health and safety culture, trained workforce and suitable safety precautions will significantly reduce the opportunity and likelihood of employees suing the company if they are made ill or injured at work. Companies who are negligent and have not complied with applicable health and safety law can face heavy fines by regulators even without a person or the environment suffering any harm, but those that have been injured or suffered an illness as a result of failings by the company can also be sued for compensation. All of this means that failing to address health and safety issues and actively prevent harm coming to people and the environment as far as is reasonably practical and in accordance with the law can result in extremely large financial costs which can even put the future of the business at risk, not to mention possible criminal prosecution of managers and directors in severe breaches.



End Note - Not All Managers are Bad!

Whilst the article highlights the potential failings of management to approach the topic of health and safety, it should also be remembered that the majority of company managers do indeed appreciate the importance of what health and safety legislation and best practice is trying to achieve. They not only have a moral reasoning for not wanting their company to cause an injury or illness to a person or harm the environment, but also understand how a safe place of work can have many long-term benefits to the organisation going forward.





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