Health insurance provides medical care in the event of disease or injury off the job. Workers’ compensation covers post injury and illness medical costs on the job. Short-term and long-term disability reacts to injury or illness off the job.
Employers now add gym memberships and preventative medicine as benefits.
Why not preventative measures for on the job injuries as a benefit? Get your employees home safe after each shift. Great benefit for their families and themselves.
How do you institute a safety policy as a benefit?
1. Make a corporate-wide decision that safety is a core ethic. Top management must embrace and lead the effort.
2. Safety meetings do not require time wasting. Create brief topics, under five minutes, that can be incorporated in every shift meeting. For example, proper use of protective eyewear – leave it on, or how to fit a hard hat.
3. Reducing the number of injuries on the job is a cost savings. Having a well known safety record, or more important a safety ethic, helps attract the best professional employees. Just as a wellness benefit attracts quality help, a safety record or effort invites serious workers to apply.
4. Reducing the severity of claims, think protective eyewear, saves the company a fortune. Consider that insurance companies view injury frequency as more vital than injury severity in predicting costs. Safety awareness decreases frequency, proper equipment and techniques decrease severity. Invest wisely in safety.
5. Communicate the human value of safety to your employees. Tell them how much money you spend on safety every year. In fact if you are not doing so, communicate to each employee how much all their benefits cost you. How much is their hidden paycheck.
Safety is the number one benefit you can offer. Believe it to your core and live it
