Benefits and costs
Benefits of good health and safety
Addressing health and safety should not be seen as a regulatory burden: it offers significant opportunities. Benefits can include:
- reduced costs;
- reduced risks;
- lower employee absence and turnover rates;
- fewer accidents;
- lessened threat of legal action;
- improved standing among suppliers and partners;
- better reputation for corporate responsibility among investors, customers and communities;
- increased productivity, because employees are healthier, happier and better motivated.
See Case studies: the benefits of successful leadership to see how organisations have gained benefits through health and safety leadership.
Costs of poor health and safety at work
HSE statistics reveal the human and financial cost of failing to address health and safety:
Each year:
- Millions of working days are lost due to work-related illness and injury.
- Thousands of people die from occupational diseases.
- Around a million workers self-report suffering from a work-related illness.
- Several hundred thousand workers are injured at work.
- A worker is fatally injured almost every working day.
Organisations can incur further costs – such as uninsured losses and loss of reputation.
For the latest statistics see the HSE statistics site.
See Case studies: when leadership falls short to learn from the mistakes of other organisations.
