As business owners – we all know the temptation to cut corners, but we also know the catastrophic results that can come from it. There is no such thing as a quick cheap fix that will make problems go away, and most importantly stay away. Health and safety regulations are no different in the fact that implementing good Health and Safety Regulations in your business will benefit you for years to come. Speaking from personal experience, when running a business your main asset is the people that work for you – and protecting these people is paramount to running a successful business because without them – where would your organisation be?

Seeing Health and Safety as an opportunity and not a burden – will bring you great success. Firstly you will improve your image as a business, if you are seen taking corporate responsibility for your business and protecting your own, this will be attractive to your current shareholders and any investors looking from the outside in. Having the correct health and safety in place across the board will protect your organisation’s name from being tainted by an employee taking legal action against you over something that could have been so easily fixed.

Millions of working days are lost per year due to workplace injury and illness – reducing these by improving your working environment and making it a safer place to work, could save you thousands on unproductive sick days. Having a healthy and happy set of staff willing to go the extra mile for your business sounds like a lot to ask, but improving their workplace will result in exactly that. Productivity will be boosted and so will morale, once your workers enjoy coming to a safe working environment then they will start getting better at their job.

Something every business is trying to do year on year is reduce costs, and I have seen first-hand that Health + Safety can be the answer. You will save money year on year on your insurance premiums as you will be claiming on them a lot less once you have a safe working environment. Also think of the costs that are not covered on your insurance, things such as sick pay, repairs on equipment or delays to your yield. These are all things that would be reduced when running a healthy and safe working environment.

The most important reason you as a business owner, be committing to health and safety in the workplace is to protect your staff, in 2015/16 621,000 people were injured at work in the UK alone resulting in 30.4Million sick days being taken. We have the responsibility to make sure that our business’ set an example for others and make Health And Safety a priority.

As the people who work for you are the most important factor in this, they need to be taught and trained in health and safety because they are the ones in the most danger. Phoenix HSC offer online training courses for lots of people at once, meaning you could get your full team of people trained up at once. For more information visit www.phoenixhsc.co.uk