Impact to Business

Injuries alone cost U.S. businesses more than 110 billion in 1993. This does not include occupational illnesses that cost many times more [5]. Are you surprised Before we get into developing a safety culture you should understand the implication of cost to your business. Let s take a closer look at the impact of incidents on companies profits and sales. 

The following list provides an overview of what a typical company might have to do to pay for an incident costing 500  

Refer to Table 1-1 for a review of the sales required to cover specific losses. This should bring the cost into perspective. In times of keen competition and low profit margins, loss control may contribute significantly more to profits. It is necessary for additional sales of 1,667,000 in products to pay the cost of 50,000 in annual losses from injury, illness, damage or theft, assuming an average profit on sales of 3 percent. The amount of sales required to pay for losses will vary with the profit margin. 

This table shows the dollars of sales required to pay for different amounts of costs for accident losses, i.e., if an organization s profit margin is 5%, it would have to make sales of 500,000 to pay for 25,000 worth of losses. With a 1% margin, 10,000,000 of sales would be necessary to pay for 100,000 of the costs involved with accidents. 

Other useful statistics that may help to sell your program are given in Table 1-2. 

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