Here’s what you need to know about the cost of a workplace injury for your business.
As a business owner, you know that your staff is your company’s lifeblood. Without them, nothing would get done! Clearly, then, you want to protect them from missed days of work. You should have another reason to invest in a good safety program, though. The cost of a workplace injury is shockingly high!
OSHA has made this really easy to demonstrate with their $afety Pays Injury or Illness Cost Calculator. This tool shows the direct cost of a workplace injury, plus the indirect costs, broken down in how much sales revenue you need to bring in to cover them. We tested it out for a single employee experiencing a workplace burn while working for a company with a 3 percent profit margin.
On top of $37,389 of direct costs, OSHA says you can anticipate $41,127 of indirect costs. This includes things like paying for the administrative time you’ll spend reporting the injury, your increased workers’ compensation costs, damaged equipment, and hiring and training a new employee to temporarily replace your injured one.
In total, that brings the combined cost of the injury to $78,516. If you’re business posts a 3 percent profit margin, you need to do $2,617,200 of sales to cover all of those costs! That’s right – you’re looking at over $2.6 million just to cover a single workplace burn!
Clearly, the cost of a workplace injury can quickly escalate. What can you do? For starters, make sure your business has a thorough workplace safety program in place. Also, look over your workers’ compensation coverage. It pays to have a policy in place that can cover as many workplace injury costs as possible.
Would you like to learn more about how a safety & loss control program and workers’ compensation can work together to keep your employees and your business safe? If so, contact PMC Insurance Group.
