Written By: Catherine Metcalf
While minimizing risk in the workplace has always been a concern, recent advances in relevant technology have given us more tools than ever to predict and prevent incidents. By taking a more proactive approach to workplace safety, employers can create a more positive work environment and reduce risk across the board. Nearly 3 percent of full-time employees were injured in 2016, underscoring the need for greater safety measures.
Having a workplace where employees are regularly injured is a sure way to negatively impact your bottom line, productivity levels, and reputation. Even if you have a strong workers compensation plan in place, you still risk bleeding your company dry.
As one workers compensation attorney in Philadelphia explains, you could pay up to 500 weeks of compensation to an injured employee. If you’re dealing with multiple injured parties at once, there’s very little chance that your company would be able to survive. That’s why establishing a culture of safety is so important.
Personal protection equipment (PPE) as well as detection devices are common parts of safety protocol for many businesses, but they can be supplemented by analytics. All of these tools can contribute to a major reduction in the rate of workplace injuries. Experts already estimate that between 80 and 97 percent of all incidents can be predicted.
Implementing Analytics
The more injuries a business can predict, the more they can prevent. In general, companies have two methods of predicting these incidents.
The first – and simplest – way is for professionals to analyze their own data and reach their own conclusions based on the available information. While tools like Excel are commonly used for this purpose, there are also more specialized applications that can provide forecasting, statistical analysis, and other features.
On the other hand, another approach involves predictive modeling, which is gaining prominence in the workplace safety sphere. It was these programs which led to the incredible predictive rates noted above, and their power and accuracy is only growing. Even companies that analyze their own data can benefit from the input of a more objective source.
The Interdependence of Analytics and Traditional Methods
While human observation and developing analytic systems are both powerful on their own, they become significantly more beneficial when combined effectively. Just as safety experts are often able to recognize issues before they became problematic, analytics should be seen as a tool to enhance that ability, rather than replace it.
Additionally, analytics provide leaders with insight and understanding that previously was unavailable, improving their capacity to notice what may later pose a threat. Analytic analysis is at its best when employed by a professional with enough experience in the field to correctly apply available tools.
Using Observation Data
Analytics can, of course, utilize data from actual incidents, but they can also simply rely on observation. In addition to their human cost, incidents are expensive. Even an injury that does not result in time off costs an average of $7,000. Thus, preemptively applying analytics allows businesses to save significant amounts of money, and demonstrates concern for overall employee well-being.
The same analytics mentioned in this article are already being applied to a wide range of fields, from investment to gambling and wine. Given that they’ve already demonstrated incredible effectiveness, employers have a profit motive—as well as a moral obligation—to implement them in order to cut down on workplace injuries and incidents.
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