We stumbled upon this excellent article (ROI: A Hazard to Employee Safety? by Tom Wojick) on the EHStoday website earlier this year, and it really struck a chord with us. The basic premise is that companies are often so focused on performance metrics like Return on Investment that other important things like worker safety take a backseat, sometimes with tragic and often fatal results.
We’ve certainly heard similar things from the field since we added our Tether Track™ Fall Protection line to our portfolio. Cranes and Intelligent Lifting Devices are an easy sell – we can prove how much they help companies increase productivity. Do a keyword search for "Productivity" in our library of case studies and you’ll see quotes from end-users talking about how our products help them assemble more parts per hour, or how they were able to turn a two-person process into a one-person process thanks to adding our equipment to their line. Those are real results that show up in the bottom line.
But fall protection has been very different. We hear the same story from a lot of safety professionals that we talk to - safety is certainly considered important, and the idea of building a safety culture is talked about a lot, but it never reaches the same level of importance that things impacting productivity reach. So when companies are budgeting, it’s much easier to justify spending money on a machine that will increase productivity 30% than on a fall protection solution that could potentially save someone’s life, especially if there haven’t been any falls in that facility yet. YET.
What’s the answer? What’s the key to creating successful safety cultures in a world that’s obsessed with ROI and the pursuit of productivity gains? We'd love to hear some of your thoughts!