By John Healy of Healy Insurances

There are sound economic reasons for reducing work-related accidents and ill-health, as well as ethical and regulatory reasons.

Economic Reasons

Besides reducing costs, effective safety and health management promotes business efficiency. Thousands of work-related accidents, resulting in more than three days off work are reported to the Health and Safety Authority each year. Work-related diseases and ill-health are more difficult to measure due to their long latency period but result in excess of one million days lost at work each year. These accident and ill-health cases are due to failures and deficiencies in the occupational safety and health management in organisations.

Legal Reasons

The Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 requires all duty holders to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the safety, health and welfare of workers and members of the public and to manage and conduct all work activities in such a way as to ensure their safety, health and welfare. This requires all who have this legal responsibility to be proactive in managing their safety, health and welfare responsibilities and deal with them in a systematic way.

Moral and Ethical Reasons

The proactive management of safety and health in the workplace helps organisations prevent injuries and ill-health at work. This management should help organisations reduce the personal loss caused as a result of accidents and ill-health at work.

A well run and proactive health and safety management system should assist in reducing the potential for insurance claims and consequently assist in obtaining the most competitive insurance premiums.