1. Following the trend of recent years, the overall (all industries) lost time injuries are down by a fraction to about 2 per 100 full time employees. But at least a portion of that is because there are fewer workers working fewer hours.
2. The industry segments with historically high LTI’s (construction, manufacturing, agriculture, health care) remain at about 4 per 100 workers.
While injury frequency and severity went down or stayed about the same the cost of those injuries increased. The following model, updated with the latest estimated data, shows the various outcomes of an accident. A safety expert once said “when an accident occurs, the only difference between a fatality and a near miss is the outcome”:
Based on this data, companies on average are incurring between $106,000 and $212,000 in injury costs for each 100 employees they have. That cost comes right off of the bottom line. If for no other reason, this information should be enough to overcome the inertia we discussed in our prior posts on The PPE Buying Decision. If an employer is spending money on PPE, but is still experiencing high injury costs, obviously, what they are using is not working. Investing the time to determine the most appropriate PPE for the hazards, and investing the money to upgrade to the highest quality PPE available provides an ROI in terms of reducing injury costs.
Properly selected, high performance, comfortable PPE that is worn everyday instead of being left in a locker, reduces injury costs by pushing them down the Cost Pyramid. For example, if an accident occurs, resulting in a worker being struck on the head by a falling object, the result may be a $53,000 LTI if the worker was wearing a low price 4-point suspension protective cap. But if that worker was wearing a high quality protective cap, with a high performance Impact Energy Control system, like the Fibre-Metal SUPEREIGHT brand by Honeywell, or any other top quality cap, the result may be reduced to a $1,200 trip to the nurse. So by investing an additional $10.00 or so in the better quality PPE, the company saved $51,800 on just that one accident.
Safety officials and all others involved in the PPE Buying Decision should capture those savings and use the information to justify their investment in a top quality PPE Program. It can be done on a per accident basis, or overall results can be compared with the aggregate statistics for their specific industry. The LTI for Construction Laborers is 4 per 100 employees. If a company upgrades its PPE and their LTI rate drops to 2 per 100 employees, the Safety Department should calculate and take credit for the savings.
PPE suppliers should play an active role in this process by being able to explain the differences of their products and “Dollarizing” the benefits of upgrading to their products. In the old days, presenting the features of a product was enough to make a sale. Then we had to develop a benefit for each feature. Adding value followed and today, the impact on a customer’s bottom line must be clearly stated. If you can’t explain how your product will reduce costs or increase profit, you can’t compete with suppliers that do.
And that applies to inside sales people and customer service associates as well as the field sales force. They must be able to talk a customer through the “Value Chain” to the bottom line impact just like a sales person in order to help customers justify buying their products or to help customers gather enough information to buy their products.
The CEO of a Top 50 Construction Company said PPE was “one of the 10 most important buys his company makes because of the potential risks and the opportunity for cost savings”. He went on to say that “injury costs and workers comp costs are the last major cost saving potentials available”. Whether it is a PPE supplier trying to sell a PPE program upgrade to a customer, or a company Safety Official trying to sell a PPE program upgrade to top management, the need to reduce injury costs should be the starting point.
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