Chapter 10
Keeping Employees
Healthy and Safe
In This Chapter
Keeping employees safe
Striving for zero accidents
Taking the SAP approach to employee health and safety
J
ust as your first priority is to maintain the soundness of your own mind and
body, so too should your company’s first order of business be to ensure
that the people in it are always healthy and safe. After all, it stands to reason:
Your people are the lifeblood of your business — literally. Injured or sick
employees present the unwelcome specter of misery and loss; recent estimates
put the costs associated with occupational injuries and illness near $170 bil-
lion: costs that are not receiving the support of government subsidies but are
simply draining your company’s coffers. Healthy people, on the other hand, are
happy people, and happy people make productive, happy businesses. At the
end of the day, it’s as simple as understanding that the shin-bone is connected
to the knee-bone.The mere thought that your company could be a major contributor to
the astronomical costs associated with yearly occupational injuries and
illnesses — again, the number is quickly rising toward the $200 billion mark —
should be enough to send you and your top team members running to the
board room for an emergency summit on how to design and institute a health
and safety program comprehensive enough to protect the well-being of your
employees, vendors, contractors, and visitors.Perhaps you have already begun. If so, our hats are off. If, however, you have
not begun, but are about to or if you are faced with islands of nonintegrated
information, it’s important that you first consider a variety of critical factors.
As you know, the success of your business ultimately depends on how happy
you keep your employees. Your employees’ happiness, on the other hand, is
really dependent on the extent to which your health and safety agenda
includes managing their commitment and involvement, and providing them
with training that meets industry-wide certification standards. You also need