How safety in workplace affects productivity

Samson Ajobiewe

A serious workplace injury can cause serious fatality and sometimes death, which can deform so many functional systems, lives, and facilities with impacts on families, friends, and even co-workers.

Man must work to satisfy societal and other requirements, that is why people work 8-10 hours in a day, seven days in a week, 28 days or more in a month and +- 300 days in a year with little or no time to rest and service the body. In other to beat traffic and avoid queries fro workplace, so many people wake up as early as 4:00 am thereby denying themselves the normal sleeping hours.

In other to get stable with the economic situation and answer financial burdens, men tend to stretch themselves beyond limits of occupational exposure.

The degree at which work and stress affect workers capabilities, longevity, mortality and overall well-being are still not well understood as some workers are forced to work 12 hours in a day and six days in a week with just an hour break.

ICYMI: Safety and risk assessment in workplace

But no matter how fixed and stretched a man is, whenever he leaves home, his families and dependants are always on the lookout for a return knock on the door announcing the arrival of their breadwinner – but what if in lieu of a return knock is a counter knock announcing their breadwinner will never come home again or a phone call to convey to the dependents that their breadwinner is on wheelchair? What a disastrous occurrence and mishap.

Ensuring the daily return of a breadwinner to their dependents, safe return of husbands to their wives, safe return of wives to their husbands, father to children and safe return of friends to friends is the basic reason to creating a safe and healthy workplace not limited to just the above reasons but also to reduce injuries, cost of accidents to employer and business reputation.

Article 16 of the ILO convention C155 confirms that employers shall ensure that as low as reasonably practicable, the workplace, machinery, equipment, and process under their control are safe and without risk to health.

With these conventions and other conventions and regulations, its expected of every employer to always conduct a risk assessment and reassessment of all operations, provide necessary personal protective equipment and aids when required. And when employers try as much as they can to satisfy all standards and requirements to provide a safe and conducive working environment, it’s obliged of employees to be compliant and use provided safe system and approaches.

When there is an accident, the cost fall on the victims, co-workers, the company and most especially productivity and efficiency…The pains go to the victim and his families moral depletion goes to co-workers, court cases and litigation and fines go to the employer, also a loss of company’s profile, reputation and loss time.

Safety cannot be diced with faith, it is a pre-condition. You don’t climb to the next step without a staircase in safety unlike it’s in Living Faith

Those who work the safest way live to see another day

Never betray yourself

Always remember that many people are counting on you and expecting your return knocks.