Safe, Efficient, Profitable: A Worker Safety Podcast
Joe and Jen Allen of Allen Safety LLC take their combined 40+ years of worker safety, OSHA, EPA, production, sanitation, and engineering experience in Manufacturing Plants including Harvest Plants/Packers, Case Readies and Further Processing Plants, Food Production Plants, Feed Mills, Grain Elevators, Bakeries, Farms, Feed Lots, and Petro-Chemical and bring you their top methods for identifying risk, preventing injuries, conquering the workload, auditing, managing emergencies and catastrophic events, and working through OSHA citations. They're breaking down real safety opportunities, safety citations, and emergency situations from real locations, and discussing realistic solutions that can actually be implement based on their personal experiences spending 40+ weeks in the field every year since 2001. Joe and Jen are using all of that experience to provide a fresh outlook on worker safety by providing honest, (no sponsors here!) and straight forward, easy to understand safety coaching with actionable guidance to move your safety program forward in a way that provides tangible results.
Safe, Efficient, Profitable: A Worker Safety Podcast
The Real Cost of Work Place Injuries: What You're Not Calculating
In this episode, Joe and Jen cover all of the tangible costs of an injury, but dive deep into the intangible costs that injuries bring that are typically not calculated. These underlying costs can cause the start of a cycle that can end up repeating for years to come. Is your business in one of these cycles? Episode summary below:
Cost of Workplace Injuries:
This episode focuses on the cost of workplace injuries, highlighting both tangible and intangible expenses such as medical bills, management time, lost productivity, and knowledge gaps.
Management Time:
Injuries lead to additional management responsibilities, including investigations, retraining, and compensating for absent employees, which disrupts regular workflows.
Loss of Productivity:
When injuries occur, productivity is impacted. Managers often spend 100% of their time running the business rather than improving it, and the absence of skilled workers further affects operations.
Employee Morale and Retention:
Extended work hours and the stress of compensating for injured colleagues cause employee fatigue, reducing morale, increasing turnover, and lowering engagement.
Knowledge Gaps:
Injured workers often possess critical skills that cannot be easily replaced. Their absence creates knowledge gaps, especially in specialized areas like maintenance, which can lead to further risks and inefficiencies.
Fatigue and Mental Health:
Fatigue due to extended work periods and increased workloads without recovery time heightens the risk of injuries and affects employees' mental health.
Customer and Public Relations:
Injuries can lead to bad PR and strain customer relations, adding pressure to the business to maintain productivity while addressing safety concerns.
Regulatory and Legal Costs:
Managing workers' compensation claims, regulatory compliance, and potential legal fees adds to the financial burden caused by injuries.
Proactive Prevention:
The podcast emphasizes the importance of preventing injuries by improving communication, addressing risks early, and ensuring employees feel heard to avoid burnout and maintain safety.
Closing Remarks:
Hosts Joe and Jen Allen remind listeners to assess all costs (tangible and intangible) associated with workplace injuries, encouraging businesses to prioritize safety not only for moral reasons but also to maintain control over their operations.
This video is intended for educational purposes. Solutions offered are not designed to take the place of an attorney or medical professional, and should not be taken as legal or medical advice. It is recommended that viewers consult a safety consultant, medical provider or an occupational safety legal team as applicable to help navigate their specific circumstances.
This week we're continuing our cost series and this week we're specifically talking about the cost of injuries.
Speaker 2:From my new office.
Speaker 1:From coming to you live. Well, not live, but coming to you from his new office All right, welcome back.
Speaker 2:everyone. Never had an office 24 years. I finally have one and we're doing a podcast in it. This is awesome. We're going to break down what all of the variables include. So first one, management time. Yeah, that's the one that no one calculates. We get caught up in work comp and the medical bill and how many days they're restricted duty or there's a lost time they away from work. What about all the management time? Yeah, or the employees time that all just got shifted? That's the.
Speaker 1:that's a huge cost so there's the time of I'm going around and I'm doing an investigation, I'm maybe doing some interviews, I'm pulling those employees out of their normal I'm finding documentation those. Yeah, I'm running down training documents and programs.
Speaker 2:I still keep it. The floor's running. So now I got to fill them with you to my job.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And I got to retrain you almost that afternoon Cause you haven't done a while, but I still got to do all that while I'm managing this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's a huge cost.
Speaker 2:It's staying.
Speaker 1:it's Saturdays, it's Sundays, and some of you are like what's new? I'm already doing those but it's just one more thing, which means something else usually falls off because we're focused on this.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So you know that drives us to the next cost. Yeah, loss of business, loss of productivity. Yeah, loss of productivity, absolutely so now that manager's time 80% of their day is supposed to be running the business. 20 making it better.
Speaker 1:Now you just made 100 of their day trying to run the business absolutely, and, and so we're also working on timelines that we didn't necessarily create yeah, in the next three days, yeah, so we've got to do four hours yeah, so we have to report the incident with that within a certain amount of time. We've got to complete an incident report and investigation within a certain amount of hours.
Speaker 2:There's all these timelines that start kicking in, but it's the holidays and I thought we had a special going out at this plant and we were going to be selling awesome cakes for Halloween. Well, you still got to do that now. Awesome On top of everything else Because you don't think about it. People's minds are all over the map on this stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So it's definitely and absolutely management time. And then the loss of the productivity that we're now shifting the focus away. We're not improving the business, we're not making it better and we're not running more efficiently.
Speaker 2:Right, and now that person does get hurt and they, they can't work for a few weeks. Yep, there's the work. You've lost the knowledge of that person.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:The, the they had. Now you've taken that expert out of that position, and now there's no way to have the exact same.
Speaker 1:I'm filling with whoever I can in that moment. That's great.
Speaker 2:Right when I'm running short, you've lost the knowledge of how they run. The machine has a hiccup every seven times.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, so they know how it runs.
Speaker 1:This is especially critical with my maintenance and my refrigeration teams.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, you have two maintenance some of these plants on weekends, if one of them's out now the other one's problems yeah, you, you can't write a procedure for everything they're gonna do that.
Speaker 1:That knowledge is gone during that time and you have that gap, which means you have risked someone else not having an injury yeah, so first I'm running shorthanded, right, because I may not be able to replace that entity with, you know, whatever they're doing, so maybe I'm just running shorthanded. I don't have somebody that day, so now that's adding extra stress to other people in that department on that line within the maintenance team.
Speaker 2:So now I have Saturday soccer. Now I can't be off Saturday because we had an injury and now we're running longer because we still got the count. We got to get out, but now I'm working more hours.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or we didn't get to a certain project, or we couldn't you know we couldn't do the repair and maintenance because it takes two people. But we couldn't schedule it because we're short. So all these things start cycling snowballing, yeah, which that then affects, from the HR side, my retention and turnover, my morale, my engagement. So people start becoming not as engaged in what's going on. They start.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to get through the shift and go home, so I really care about everything else that day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're not satisfied with their work environment because things are getting harder. They're already maybe tough and now it's worse.
Speaker 2:There's more. It was my fifth day I'm supposed to be off. Now it's my sixth day I just want to go home. And now and before you know it, it's a direct spiral, yep.
Speaker 1:So now we're looking at fatigue of the existing employees who are doing more and they haven't had that time off to recover, recuperate or clear their minds from, you know, the mental health, so that's almost an ergo issue in itself yeah if you think about that, we did an episode a while back on ergo, but that's, that's one yeah is it now?
Speaker 2:I'm just worn out because it's been six, seven days. I wasn't planning, I planning on it. I never get the day to recover.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2:My mental health now is affected. Yep, because now I'm missing the holidays, I'm missing the Sunday, I'm missing the things I scheduled to do because someone else had an injury.
Speaker 1:My spouse is aggravated because I'm not there, and when I am there I'm more fatigued, I'm more tired.
Speaker 2:That I really want to do the dishes today. I'm going to use that as an excuse. You know, I just worked. Seven days, Sounds correct. I like to soak the dishes and get them ready. Listen, there's two real quick sidebar.
Speaker 1:There's two kinds of people. There's the people who do the dishes and then there's the people who soak the dishes because they're going to do them later, but they don't really do them later.
Speaker 2:That's right. So then you have your customers, your customers. Your customers are not happy because, you had an injury and makes them look bad. So now you get the press, now you get the things coming out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there could be some potential bad PR for them. Absolutely so now they're putting heat on the facility too, which, again, so this is my management team, who's now maybe working more hours because they're having to do this investigation.
Speaker 2:Now they're worried about keeping the customer happy.
Speaker 1:Now they've got customer retention issues.
Speaker 2:Supply chain still there, but it's. It's the way it looked yeah it looked to them it's the end user absolutely so.
Speaker 1:We've got the heat that ops is now taking to make sure that the product gets out the door but that we get a solution and a fix. So there's even more stress and strain on my management absolutely.
Speaker 2:And then there's government and it comes in. So we got some litigation, regulatory agencies, and then you got some work comp that comes about it and you're trying to spend your time managing work comp when that time wouldn't be as much if you hadn't had the injury yeah, so we have all of the costs that we just talked about are not necessarily I'm spending a dollar, so they're intangible, but they're still there, right, right.
Speaker 1:And then I have actual tangible costs of I have fines that I have to, I have fixes.
Speaker 2:I have to put in place.
Speaker 1:I have the medical bills the hospital bills the work comp bills I maybe have to change and adjust and pay here and there for adding employees or whatever that looks like, so there could be some financial costs to that.
Speaker 2:So we have some legal costs down the road, that other things come.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there could be some litigation costs, uh, attorney fees and some things like that.
Speaker 2:so there, are even for your location, your own attorney, maybe spending their time now trying to deal with?
Speaker 1:yeah, if you don't have internal company legal, you may have to get outside counsel absolutely and then, uh, overall morale.
Speaker 2:That that's, I know we talked about a couple minutes ago, but the longer this goes on, more that changes it really does start messing with people mentally it does. I've been to plants where I say why do you work here? Well, the place I worked was kind of unsafe and they feel it, yeah, and and that cost or the perception that, if this is now repeated, that the management team doesn't care. And then they feel weird and and they leave.
Speaker 1:Now.
Speaker 2:we're turnover again Now we now we changed that narrative again. We're at three great experienced people, but their family feels like yeah, I feel like the management team here doesn't care.
Speaker 1:I feel like they're not hearing that I have a concern. I feel like they're not valuing me because I'm doing all these extra hours.
Speaker 1:I feel that I'm taking heat from my family member. So we end up losing employees and have that turnover, all because we didn't manage the injury on the front end. So I think one of the biggest things that I hear kind of the old school thought process was well, we'll just take the injury and pay the bill. But what I think is important to note is that yes, there's the bill of all the things, that the tangible costs we just talked about. Where we're talking about, you know, you said, work comp, hospital bills, attorney fees, all of those things, the citations, those are all costs and I'm not sure we're calculating that whole bill of times.
Speaker 1:we're not calculating at all the intangible things that are still a cost and can be really a problem and a drain on the business in terms of you know how people feel and the morale and the productivity.
Speaker 2:My one of my greatest costs that I worry about daily owning a company is the emotional state of my team.
Speaker 1:Burning them out.
Speaker 2:Burning them out because it does no good to have a great team If they all want to quit they're exhausted and they're tired and they can't run the product. We have a philosophy of you know, let's make sure we're we're ready to go.
Speaker 1:So we have a great day and a great product which means they have to have a certain amount of downtime.
Speaker 2:That's right, you have to. So we have to factor in that time it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:There's still a cost to that.
Speaker 2:There's a cost to that, so that I'm trying to prevent that injury and there's a cost to it. But if the injury does occur now I can't send somebody somewhere. That ripple affects greatly to everybody travels and hotels and everything that just happens.
Speaker 1:So one of the things we want to really look at is how do we get ahead of that? So solutions right, Not just let's create a bunch of problems and concerns for you and give you nothing as a solution at the end. So one of my things would be is how do we prevent that burnout? That fatigue is a huge reason for why some of the injuries happen, whether it's physical fatigue or mental fatigue.
Speaker 1:Yes that can be a huge thing. So how do we make sure that people are getting that recovery time? So I know we're doing job cuts. I know that we're evaluating how many positions do we really need for X and can we distribute some of the responsibilities onto other team members? I want to really encourage you to evaluate what that's going to look like over the long term in terms of is that going to be the last thing that pushes somebody to quit? And now we've lost all of that knowledge? So maybe that changes our downtime and how long we're down because they took some of that data with them.
Speaker 1:So we really want to evaluate how can we get ahead of that, avoid that burnout and try and retain those employees that really do have the knowledge and they do want to be there. So let's make them feel like they're being hurt.
Speaker 2:Hopefully you don't have the injury.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that way they feel like there's good communication they can freely discuss. Hey, I've got some concerns. This feels unsafe. This feels a little weird. I don't feel right doing this. Something just seems. Let's have those open lines of communication. Let's make sure that we can discuss any potential risks that feel a little off, so that they feel like it's a safe place to work, and I think that that'll go a long way.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. These are our opinions. Yes, they are, so it's based on our experiences.
Speaker 1:We were both safety managers working in the plant. This is based on our experience with our own team, our own staff, based on myself 24 years being on the road.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Being on the road, so do a risk assessment. We're not saying that it's perfect, we're not saying that it's the end all, but there are quite a few tangible and intangible costs. So before we approach something with, well, we'll just take the injury and move on, we want to make sure that we're really evaluating. What does that cost look like? In addition to I think I'll leave you with this one. My final thing is is why would we take an injury? First off, we don't want to hurt anybody. Second of all, I'm really big on not having some other entity tell me how to run my business.
Speaker 1:So now I'm having to do fixes on their timeline the way they feel I've got to get whatever parts and whatever contractors are available to do stuff. So I think that that would be. The last thing is that if we don't do it for the injury because it's the right thing to do, then we maybe just look at it from the business side of why would we allow somebody else to tell us how and when we should spend our money and what we should spend it on in the timelines? That's, that's not great either. So absolutely that's what we'll leave you with, I think today.
Speaker 1:This is Joe Allen, jen Allen. You can find us on LinkedIn. You can find us on any socials at Allen safety LLC. And Thank you for listening to Safe, efficient, profitable a worker safety podcast. If you're looking for more in-depth discussions or step-by-step solutions on all of the different safety and regulatory topics, please visit us at wwwallensafetycoachingcom for web-based virtual coaching and training, or at wwwallen-safetycom to book our team for onsite services, training sessions, to order merchandise, to learn more about our team and what services we provide in the field, or just simply to request a topic for us to cover on our next podcast. If you found today's podcast helpful and would like to support our podcast further. Please help us by subscribing, liking and sharing this podcast with anyone that could benefit from the information we cover here, as that helps us to continue to put out this free content. Thank you so much for your support. Thank you.
