Often we hear... we can't afford a safety program, so we are just going to keep doing what we are doing. This thought pattern can be an easy out, but when you consider the cost of an injury and lost time at work, it just is not worth it.
So let's look at an example. If Company A has 55 employees and they have purchased 25 courses from our library, that would cost them $4,555 a year. That might seem like a significant number, but if you break it down, that is two topics a month for $6.90 for one employee a month.
Now we are going to jump into five ways that your safety program can pay for itself.
We are food people here at ving. We will never tell you to remove your company lunches from the calendar altogether, but what if you only needed one safety meeting a month instead of one for every training. If we keep with our example and plugin that the average cost of lunch is $11.00. That means that every month if you hold two safety meetings, you are spending $1,2010 a month. That is $14,520 a year! Do you know what you could get with that money? You could get training for 225 employees!
Okay, but let's go back to reality. We think you should still hold a monthly meeting because again... we love food and the culture it builds with your employees. So let's take those averages again but only with one meeting a month... calculating... you will save $7,260 a year! That still covers your entire license of ving.
We have heard time and time again that one of the biggest challenges and time-consuming tasks is figuring out what to send to your employees. If this takes you 2 hours a month to look up topics, it is costly.
Again, let's look at an average salary of a safety manager — $77,000 a year. With this average salary as an example, it means before taxes, they are making $5,923 a month. That breaks down close to $37 an hour. So for this example, it costs $74 a month for someone to look up safety topics. If you turn that into yearly savings, it comes it $888.00.
With ving, you get a dedicated ving success manager and a topic expert. We take 15 minutes of your time, create your library, and suggest a monthly send schedule. Pretty cool.
Paper costs can vary so massively, depending on what your company finds as standard practice. For example, if you are mailing training information home, your costs will be a lot higher. That being said, if you are printing training material and handing it out to employees, in-class paper costs are still an issue.
With ving, you can email reports directly to your employees or OSHA as needed.
It is becoming more and more common in the construction and manufacturing industries that turn over is an issue and probably costs you more than you think. For your entry-level workers who make $10 an hour, replacing them costs $3,200 (source). Turn over for smaller sized companies has been seen as low as 20%; however, let's say your company is having a great year and only has a turn over of 5 employees (we know it is higher).
If you can reduce your turn over by just five employees, you can put $16,000 back into your safety budget.
After some research, it has come to our attention that it is both common and tempting to do bulk-hiring. For example, in the construction industry, often companies will wait until they have a considerable project that demands more workers. There are a few problems with this method.
Current workers are overworked and burned out.
Excellent skilled workers are hard to find on short notice.
Because of the need to hire more workers quickly, often higher wages and benefits are offered to attract new workers.
Instead of waiting until you find yourself in these situations, always be hiring. Don't wait till you are backed into a corner to higher workers who are not experienced and skilled. Keep in mind those turnover numbers we talked about above.
If you are ready to implement these best practices and allow your safety program to pay for itself, give us a call today.