Precast Inc. - September/October 2008 - (Page 26) S A F E T Y & H E A LT H World-Class Safety – At Home Helping your employees and their families to be safe at home is a smart business investment. BY RANDY DEVAUL E mployers and employees have a vested interest in workplace safety. Employers want to ensure that their most valuable asset – their people – are safe and protected from hazards while making sure they cover all the compliance requirements for establishing and maintaining a safe work environment that is free of recognized hazards. And employees want to ensure that they are able to perform their tasks safely so they can stay employed while making sure they don’t adversely affect their quality of life or family lifestyle from a serious injury on the job. Across the country, however, there is great interest building in off-the-job safety as well. A recent report indicated that employers spend up to $38 billion (yes, with a ‘b’) annually on costs associated with their employees or employee dependents from being injured at home! That is an average annual cost of $280 for every employee in the United States. And in a survey conducted by the National Safety Council, nearly 60 percent of respondents said they believed the cost of off-the-job injuries is greater than or equal to the cost of workplace injuries. Employers are recognizing that getting the safety message home is another way of protecting employees and keeping a competitive edge on costs, experience, and product/service quality. Consider these three examples: • Scott, one of your long-time employees, is looking forward to his son’s little league season opener tonight – but first he has to clean out the rain gutters on his house. Scott is careful and follows good ladder safety practices, but it is almost time to leave for the game. To save time, he leans beyond the side rails of the ladder to catch that last couple of feet rather than moving the ladder again. When the medics arrive, Scott tells them he cannot feel his legs. Later, the doctor advises Scott that he has seriously damaged his spinal cord and chances are not good that he will walk again. • Michael left work early today because his daughter fell down in the back yard, breaking her femur. She’s going to be in the hospital for a couple of weeks while recovering from surgery with the leg in traction before a cast can be set and she can go home. Michael will spend the night at the hospital and then come back to work tomorrow, with little or no sleep and with his thoughts constantly on the welfare of his daughter. • John was playing basketball with his teenagers at home over the weekend and blew out his knee. He iced it down for a couple of days so he could at least get to work Monday morning. Two hours into the shift, he tells his supervisor that he twisted his knee getting off the loader and it’s really painful. Since no one saw it happen, this one goes down as a work-related injury, so John doesn’t have to pay all of the expense himself. What do these events have in common? Each employee is a “statistic” for a home-related injury. The costs Every employer has experience with an employee calling in to miss a shift (or more) of work because of an injury that occurred while off duty. Others may call in absent because of an injury involving another family member, such as a spouse or child, which requires the employee’s attention. This type of event creates indirect costs to the employer: overtime pay of other employees covering the position; loss of experience from the one who is missing (which may impact the quality of the end product or service); teams or crews working short-handed but with the same amount of work (creating stress, shortcuts and more injuries). This certainly does not minimize the additional costs – financial and familial – that occur with the family of the injured person. Unlike an injury that occurs at work and is under the workers’ compensation umbrella for direct medical and possible income relief, non-workrelated injuries cause the family to bear the full brunt of the injury. Co-pays, deductibles, additional service payments (X-rays, consultations), loss of wages while away from work, loss of spouse wages if requiring 26 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2008 | PRECAST INC.
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.