Manufacturing: The health and safety question

The statistics are in and they’ve revealed a worrying truth – that manufacturing is a potentially dangerous industry for workers.

We know this because the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has found that in the sector over the past five years, there has been an average of more than 3,100 reports of major injuries and roughly 4,100 reports of injuries that kept people away from work for seven days or more.

The statistics are in and they’ve revealed a worrying truth – that manufacturing is a potentially dangerous industry for workers.

What this means is that despite manufacturing being an industry where safety is so embedded into the culture, serious accidents are still happening. And this is an alarming state of affairs, particularly when corporate manslaughter charges and huge fines are at the top end of the potential repercussions.

The consequences of getting safety wrong

When these injuries do happen, in addition to your company sustaining reputational damage, you may also find yourself – personally – facing criminal charges. And could you handle being thrown in jail for not managing your employee health and safety better?

And if all that wasn’t bad enough, businesses that don’t carry out sufficient safety checks can be legally judged as negligent – something we see far too often in the manufacturing industry.

Just look at how Tata Steel UK was recently fined £450,000 for safety breaches after a worker fell into an open pit. The worker sustained injuries including damage to his kidney and ribs. And in another case, decorative panel manufacturing company Laminated Products Limited was hit by a £45,000 fine when a worker was severely injured after using an industrial saw.

Can your business afford these sorts of fines – especially when they’re avoidable? These two businesses have learnt the consequences of getting it wrong the hard way, but we know you don’t want that for your business.

Impact of workplace injuries

Being injured at work can contribute to employee stress, job dissatisfaction and turnover intent. This is according to a recent academic study. When workers suffer injuries – or see their colleagues experiencing them – they’re likely to feel that their safety is not being taken seriously.

And when staff turnover is a result of that feeling, as the researchers explained, it’s pretty clear just how significant the impact on workers is. It can be hugely difficult for companies to regain their workers’ trust when something goes wrong. And when people aren’t engaged with their work, their performance suffers. This then has a knock-on effect on your business’ output.

Just some of the results of workplace injuries are:
• Drops in productivity
• Lost time
• Damage to equipment
• Reputational damage
• Loss of business opportunities
• Additional training costs
• Rise in insurance costs

With all these potential outcomes, it just makes sense to focus on the health and safety of your workers.

How can you stay safe and compliant?

Ensuring you can monitor what’s happening in your business is one step towards staying compliant, and – more importantly – keeping your people safe from harm. When there are multiple elements to keep track of in your business, you need to ensure you maintain visibility over what has been checked and when. This is essential to identifying defects, which goes a long way towards keeping everyone safe.

You can do it with our Monitoring Module. It will transform the way you conduct your business’ operational checks, as well your food, fire and health and safety checks, while supporting multiple frequency schedules.

Peace of mind comes with confidence – knowing that your colleagues and your business are safe from harm is one less thing to worry about, leaving you to focus on what you do best – innovating and creating.

You can find out more by calling us now on 0161 967 1616 or just filling the below form out.