What is the cost of safety? What is the risk? What is the payoff?

To make some preliminary judgement on these questions we must first face what some facts are.

What is the average cost of a workplace injury? Knowing what the likely cost of not having a sound safety program will show us what added value can be experienced when having a solid safety program in place.

Aside from the direct costs of injury lets not forget the added penalties. What penalties? The cost of rising worker's compensation. The costs of business insurance in the protection of property, the cost of company liability for employee losses. The cost of losing employee work time due to injuries. Let's not forget the cost of non- compliance.

OSHA and the BLS (Bureau of Labor and Statistic) state that the average cost of a single lost time injury averages $29,000. The cost of OSHA violations can be $,2000-$10,000 for each violation.

A real world scenario: A business had to comply with the Lead Standard for exposure control for 8 employees. The OSHA inspection discovered that the business had no documented training on the topic for all the employees. That equals 8 violations. The inspection also noted that the required medical surveillance testing for lead in the blood of the employees was not being performed. That equals another 8 violations. The total fines levied was $33,000.

So the best answer to the question of what of the cost of safety is best answered by the question what is the cost of not having a proper safety management program?