Business


Free E-Course: The Business Case for Health & Safety

ccohs

The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) has launched a free e-course (approximately 30 minutes in length) entitled the Business Case for Health & Safety.  The course (i.e. information session) can be viewed at anytime.

(HERE is a direct link to the course in English)

The goal of the Business Case for Health and Safety is to help organizations learn the benefits that can be gained from having a health and safety program in the workplace.

Business Case for Health and Safety will introduce participants to many positive reasons for adopting a proactive approach to health and safety. This course is offered free of charge by CCOHS to promote awareness of this important issue, and is recommended for managers, supervisors, business owners and anyone who wants to learn about the value of organizational health and safety.

This course will provide an overview of what health and safety is and will outline the benefits for employers and organizations.

CCOHS courses are developed by experts in the field and reviewed by labor, employer and government representatives.


Selling Safety in a Tough Economy

stock_market_crashSource: EHS Today & the National Safety Council

Barriers to Selling Safety

Phil La Duke (Director of Performance Improvement at O/E Learning) outlined the following common roadblocks to selling safety to company leadership:

  • No budget. According to La Duke, this is one of the biggest barriers to selling safety. Even more, the budget often is an excuse for company leadership who really don’t want to address safety; they use it to push safety professionals away.
  • Safety is perceived as discretionary spending. “Sometimes, [safety] is discretionary spending, something it’s not. We have to do know the difference,” La Duke said.
  • Safety is viewed as an overhead cost. Company operations or leadership sometimes assume people inevitably are going to get hurt, and they therefore accept those injuries as an overhead cost.
  • Safety is seen as important but not urgent. While La Duke said it is extremely rare to hear company leadership say that safety is not important, they might not view safety as urgent or as the most important concern.
  • The “We might get lucky” attitude. Company operations may hope things proceed normally without any accidents happening – a dangerous strategy that relies on luck.
  • The company’s recent safety performance has artificially improved. Sometimes, safety performance appears to improve for little or no reason. When that happens, company leadership might question why it’s important to focus on safety.

Keys to Selling Safety

La Duke explained how EHS professionals can overcome those barriers and present safety in a way that ensures it gets attention, no matter what the current economic climate. The bottom line is to meet company leadership’s needs and to show how safety fits it with the organization’s goals and success.

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