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WHY HEALTH & SAFETY
Direct costs are easy to calculate and often insurable by business. They include:
- Payments to other workers for overtime such as those who require output from the staff member who was injured in order to complete their duties
- Damage to premises, plant and equipment
- Sick pay and medical costs to the injured person
Indirect costs are the ones that you need to seriously take into consideration and be aware of. They are harder to calculate and prepare for and tend to be uninsured. They include:
Lost time or time away from the job not covered by workers’ compensation insurance
- Medical costs not covered by insurance, this may include very large amounts such as air ambulance repatriation of the worker back to their home country
- Additional payments such as employing or outsourcing temporary workers and training them up to the job
- Sick pay to injured staff who start going off sick due to additional stress or low morale
- Production delay and overtime due to the accident (lost production, additional supervision and supervisior costs, additional utilities such as heat, light, etc
- Fines and legal costs if prosecutions are decided on and court dates are given
- Cost of engaging with external companies for any site remedial works needed
- Loss of contracts or inability to fulfil contracts due to site work being suspended or key workers no longer being present
- Damage to products, plant, buildings, tools, equipment
- Management time spent looking after injured staff, investigating the accident, supervising any activities necessary to resume the operation of business: leading to a drop off in overall productivity of the management team
- Excess on any insurance claim/s
- Loss of business reputation
- Loss of expertise and experience