OSHA has established an online “Safety Pays” program to help you understand the costs of maintaining an unsafe workplace. This interactive tool lets you move through an estimator program to see exactly how much a number of specific injuries will cost your workplace.
In the program, which you can find online here, you are able to either select an injury from a drop-down list or enter your own company’s costs manually to see how they add up. Once you select or input an injury, the estimator will tell you the direct costs, indirect costs, total costs and indirect sale costs and then give you a total sale value required to recoup these costs. These add up quickly. For example, here are the costs associated with & total sales needed to recoup losses from one burn injury, assuming a default profit margin of 3%:
- Injury Type: Burn
- Intances: 1
- Direct Cost: $37,389
- Indirect Cost: $41,127
- Total Cost: $78,516
- Additional Sale (Indirect): $1,370,930
- Additional Sale (Total): $2,617,200
Employers will always have to cover the indirect costs, but the extent to which individuals have to pay for their own direct costs will vary. This value assumes the program’s default of 3% profit margin, which will also vary, but you should be able to assess the total sales your company should need by inputting your actual profit margin. No matter how high the variation, however, your losses will still be steep! Job safety programs make sense for workers and management alike. On-the-job accidents cause emotional and mental harm, and they’re also incredibly costly!
