{"id":54189,"date":"2018-06-12T11:33:14","date_gmt":"2018-06-12T10:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.commercialriskonline.com\/?p=54189"},"modified":"2021-07-15T16:36:20","modified_gmt":"2021-07-15T15:36:20","slug":"managing-employee-safety-risks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.commercialriskonline.com\/managing-employee-safety-risks\/","title":{"rendered":"Managing employee safety risks"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is often said that its employees are the most valuable asset a business has, and as a risk manager, protecting people should be your top priority.<\/p>\n

As a risk manager, you are broadly responsible for protecting the three \u2018Ps\u2019 of your business \u2013 its property, its people and its profitability. While these are clearly connected in many cases \u2013 for example, having sprinklers in your buildings makes employees safer as well as reducing property risk \u2013 protecting your people is the most important of the three due to the human costs involved in any incident.<\/p>\n

In many countries around the world, employers\u2019 responsibilities towards employees are covered by state schemes. Two notable exceptions are the UK and the US, where insurance is a statutory requirement for all businesses. Therefore, your focus will be less on having the right insurance cover in place \u2013 as this is probably unnecessary or mandatory depending on your location \u2013 and more on reducing the likelihood, frequency and severity of accidents, potential health hazards and claims, while also increasing defensibility if they do occur.<\/p>\n

According to the Health and Safety Executive, 5.5 million working days were lost in the UK due to non-fatal workplace injuries in 2016\/2017. How many of these incidents could have been avoided by taking the right risk management approach?<\/p>\n

At Zurich we help businesses around the world to identify, understand and manage employee safety risks. We hope that sharing our insights in this article will help you to take a fresh look at your own processes to see if there are any areas where you could make improvements.<\/p>\n

Learning from history<\/strong>
\nA good place to start this fresh look is with historical claims data, which can provide valuable insights and trends into the potential for future problems.<\/p>\n

Analysing information on previous incidents for patterns can allow you to prioritise areas for immediate attention. Are claims more prevalent at certain sites? Are some types of injury, illness or incident more common than others? Are specific employee cohorts more exposed to risk or prone to incidents? Having your claims data collected centrally in a consistent format will obviously make this task easier.<\/p>\n

Finding answers locally<\/strong>
\nThe more risk data you can collect, the more detailed and accurate a picture you can build up. Ideally, this would involve gathering information on each of your sites. For many businesses, however, this is a challenge due to the sheer numbers involved. For example, the time and costs involved in sending a risk engineering expert to every outlet of a multinational retailer would likely be prohibitive.<\/p>\n

However, self-risk assessments, where local management are given guidance on how to survey and record the risks at their own sites, can be a powerful tool for overcoming this issue.<\/p>\n

Taking a comprehensive view<\/strong>
\nHaving defined processes in place is fundamental to any effort to manage employee safety risks across your business. Identifying and documenting the way your business handles the following aspects of employee safety will help you to take a methodical and comprehensive approach to risk management:<\/p>\n