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Writer's pictureChris Brosnan

How Good Health and Safety Impacts Your Bottom Line In A Positive Way

If you’ve been considering gaining a pre qualification accreditation with SiteWise then understanding how investing in good health and safety management can have a positive impact on your bottom line is a good place to start.




Pre-qualifications add credibility to your business


With the forecasted downturn in the Construction industry in 2023, Main Contractors can afford to be picky about who they work with. The days where every contractor was booked out for weeks and you had to work with whoever could fit it in are coming to an end. Main Contractors can now afford to consolidate their contractor base & those without outstanding Health and Safety could find themselves out of luck.

Getting your business qualified with pre-qualification programs like Sitewise can really help your business show that it takes Health and Safety seriously. It’s fast becoming essential to even being considered for contracts


Need some help with Pre-Qualification? GET IN TOUCH


Good Health and Safety is about Continuous Improvement.


Adopting an attitude of focusing on not just what’s going right but always looking for continuous improvement to keep an eye on what could potentially go wrong will definitely save you money around things like long term injuries, ACC levies etc and of course; make you money when you win those nice construction projects.


Why?

Because when it comes to winning tenders, there’s a whole section based on your health and safety performance you have to complete. When you can fill those sections out with confidence and pride you know you’re onto a good thing. Better still; if you’ve already gone through the pre qualification system and got a big green tick your potential for attracting new business improves.


If you can embed strong values around health and safety it becomes the norm in your workplace culture to do the right thing which is absolutely priceless.


If you’ve been thinking of health and safety negatively it really is time to change your perspective because health and safety is a wise investment for all involved.


Costs Like LTIs (Long Term Injuries) & ACC Levies


We all hate it when an employee suffers a long term injury (LTI) for many reasons besides the fact they have sustained an often painful and more than often preventable injury, but the financial impacts include;

  • Your employee suffers financially because they only receive 80% of their earnings which most of the time affects not just themselves, but their whanau too

  • You have to find someone to cover their role and the job they do. At the moment easier said than done but without a full team that can delay parts of the job completing on time affecting your next draw down for example or getting that all important final job for completion invoice paid on time

  • Part of your ACC levies are based on your claims history but you can reduce your work levy based on preventing injuries at work and you could qualify for a discount too. (there’s a few variants ACC take into consideration so check in with them or ask one of our consultants how it all works)

Think of what you can do when you save money on your ACC levies when they’re discounted:

  • Engage a professionally, qualified health and safety consultant to regularly work with you and your team to ensure best practice

  • How about shouting the team morning tea or a BBQ to say thanks for their outstanding safety performance once a month? Most employees don’t always need a big pay increase to keep them happy and it’s the simple things that can mean a lot

  • Maybe there’s a health and safety champion in your crew who deserves a shout out and a new flash pair of John Bull safety boots? It’s good for the whole team to see that spotting a potential hazard that could have cost lots be recognised

Another real cost is the cost of time and management because getting your employee back to work after a long term injury takes time and time is money. You want to be focused on running the business but now some of your focus will have to be on their rehabilitation.


Need some help? GET IN TOUCH


Reparations and Fines


Reparation payments are compensation payments made to someone who has been harmed due to an incident at work or to their family should that person lose their life. This is to recognise the loss of earnings that person’s death will impact the family.


On top of that companies can also be fined under the Health and Safety at Work Act.


These reparations and fines can run into the tens of thousands and this is a financial hit most construction companies can’t survive.


Convincing a court that you’re not financially viable to pay commonly fails and yes, insurance can cover some of the cost but not all.


When you minimise the risk of incidents and accidents you’re also minimising the risk to your financial health too. To make the role of health and safety in your business more effective having a system like SiteWise to follow aligns everyone’s attitude towards safety in line with the daily tasks. That means not only are they thinking how to do the task right; they are thinking about how to do it safely too.


Once the team know you’re putting their health and safety first and you “walk the talk”; you won’t have to always give it the hard sell. It will become a positive part of your culture.


It’s not enough to just stop at PPE or the occasional tool box talk here and there. You have to be consistent and put controls in place to manage it correctly.


There’s so many moving (literally) parts when we talk about on site health and safety management; from traffic management around the trucks bringing materials on site to working at heights to machine guards that if managed well will not cause you financial headaches and of course; keep your crew safe.

 

Nailed It Safety Solutions equip you and your whole team around embedding robust health and safety systems and procedures. When it’s time to get your workplace to SiteWise standard or similar we have very clear plans and guidelines for you to follow. We’ve worked with hundreds of small businesses to help them achieve their SiteWise accreditation and we think that’s worth its weight in gold. Get in touch, fill out the form below.





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