Each year, thousands of workers are injured on the job throughout a variety of industries, including construction, carpentry, automotive, and even people who work regular office jobs.
For this reason, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) created a set of safety regulations that all businesses must follow. Most businesses do a good job of meeting these regulations, but sometimes safety gets skipped for the sake of convenience. This is always a bad idea.
image credit: Rawpixel / CC0
There are serious consequences for ignoring your company’s safety policies and procedures. Here’s why your business can’t afford to put convenience ahead of safety.
Serious injuries can be fatal
Within most jobs, employees become accustomed to doing things a certain way. If there’s any danger involved, going a long period without injury can give them a false sense of security. If this happens, they’ll be more likely to break protocol if it makes things easier for them.
For example, they might skip wearing gloves to get better dexterity, or forego wearing goggles to get a better look at what they’re working with. If you don’t stop this from happening, it’s only a matter of time before your employees become injured.
One of the biggest dangers happens to be fluid injection injuries, but they don’t seem so bad on the surface. Some people don’t even realize they’ve been injured because the injection site can be so small. However, when hydraulic fluid under high pressure breaks the skin and gets into the body, it can be lethal.
The solution to this problem is to get leak-free quick connect couplers that can be disconnected and reconnected under pressure. When you don’t have to bleed the line and eliminate the pressure before changing attachments, it’s an overall safer experience for the person doing the work.
All it takes is one mishap for someone to sustain a life-threatening injury. It’s never worth putting profits above people for the sake of speed or convenience. If safety policies are slowing you down, consider finding other ways to be more efficient or just accepting that your current rate of production is the best you’re going to get.
Employees can report your business
There are systems set up to help employees report unsafe conditions at work, and one of those avenues is through OSHA. In fact, OSHA even explicitly allows employees to refuse to perform dangerous work if the situation meets certain conditions. For instance, the employee needs to have asked you to eliminate the danger, they must genuinely believe danger is present, and there isn’t enough time to get the hazard corrected through an official OSHA inspection.
If these and any other required circumstances are met, OSHA will protect the employee from being fired or disciplined, which means if you take action against that employee, they can sue you and have a higher possibility of winning their case.
You don’t want your business to get in trouble with OSHA because your entire operation will be inspected and scrutinized. You will get fined for violations and if things are bad enough, you might be forced to shut down operations until you fix certain hazards. Also, after one person files a complaint, others may follow suit, especially if you’ve been instructing employees to ignore OSHA regulations.
Injured employees might file a lawsuit
Under normal circumstances, with a workers’ compensation policy, employees would be required to file a claim and cannot sue you. This is why it’s crucial to have workers’ compensation even if you aren’t legally required to carry it. There are some limited exceptions where an employee can still sue you, so be very careful.
Hopefully, you have workers’ compensation, but if you don’t or you’re not legally required to carry it, you can expect a lawsuit from injured employees. It’s critical to follow all required safety regulations dictated by OSHA and have all additional necessary procedures in place to keep your workplace safe. Many employees will find your safety policies to be annoying or inconvenient, but you’ll have to work around those obstacles.
Take safety seriously
Accidents happen, so you can’t avoid every possible injury. However, safety standards and regulations are specifically created to prevent many potential injuries, and this is supported by decades of data.
Don’t risk your employees’ well-being or your business by ignoring safety requirements. If your employees are intentionally disregarding safety policy, start enforcing it right away. Don’t let preventable accidents happen because you might end up going out of business.
