For employers, Health & Safety is vitally important if a company is to survive and prosper.  It only takes one problem to create knock-on effects that can seriously damage the future of companies and even lead to imprisonment. Listed here you will see some key statistics that you should be aware of …

Fatal injuries
On average there are approximately 250 fatal injuries per year
Other injuries
In an average year employers report approximately 160,000 other injuries to workers, mostly caused by manual handling and work-related stress.

Major injuries

On average employers report 30,000 major injuries – a figure that has increased over the last three years, mainly in the service industries.

The most common injuries reported are:

• Slipping and tripping
• Manual handling
• Falling from heights
• Being struck by a moving or falling object

So how do these injuries affect businesses? ......

Ill health

An estimated 2.2 million people in Great Britain are suffering from an illness which they believed was caused or made worse by their current or past work.

Working days lost

an estimated 39 million working days are lost overall, 30 million due to work-related ill health and 9 million due to workplace injury per year. Health & Safety Executive (HSE) research indicates the average cost of accidents per employee per year is GB335.

FINANCIAL:

Accidents cost money. The Health & Safety Executive (H.S.E.) estimate that for each GB 1 of insured costs, there is approximately GB 8 - GB 36 of uninsured costs.

These costs are calculated by one or more of the following:

 Loss of Production

Time spent Investigating Accidents

  Fines & Legal Costs

  Replacement Staff and Re-Training

  Bad Publicity

  Increased Insurance Premiums

Company image

A MORI poll for the British Safety Council has shown that a third of senior business people in the UK expect to see a 'substantial fall' of between 10 and 25% in their company's share price if they were successfully prosecuted under proposed new legislation to make companies accountable in criminal law where it can be shown that the company is responsible for a person's death. One in ten Board directors foresee a major fall in company share prices, of more than a quarter, in such an event.

Insurance

Insurers, brokers and lobby groups estimate that premiums for employers liability insurance will rise by between 30% and 100% this year, and many more firms will be refused cover altogether.  Smaller businesses are hit particularly hard because they have not been able to demonstrate to insurers that they have been looking at health and safety.