Don't Leave Your Workplace Open to Accidents and Lawsuits

As a responsible business owner, you want to ensure that your employees are safe as they go about their daily work. Healthy employees are likely high on your priority list.

Workplace safety matters, not only because you don't want people to get hurt in general, but because workplace accidents and lawsuits are costly for business owners.

Walmart Example

Walmart went through a period of time where their employee accidents and injuries were well above the norm.

Employees were reporting all manner of workplace injuries, ranging from tripping on floor debris to getting hit over the head with falling boxes on warehouse shelves.

Walmart's reputation suffered, as well, and they became known for a while as an employer that didn't care about the safety of its employees.

In 2012, Walmart settled a class action lawsuit for a total of $8 million, brought by more than 13,000 employees. Walmart paid half, and their insurance company paid the other $4 million.

Unless you have an extra 8 million dollars sitting around in your business bank account, you'd do well to learn from Walmart's bad example.

Learning Lessons

In this “Expert Interview with Dr. Timothy Ludwig on Cultivating a Safety Culture," he explains the importance of learning lessons from those who have failed.

From failure, lessons are learned. It would be a shame not to take heed of what kind of accidents can happen in the workplace, and how they happen. In other words, it doesn't take a fortune teller; it takes a forensic specialist.

Following are some ways that accidents occur, and how to prevent them….

Overtired Employees

Tired people make mistakes.

Whatever they're doing, from filling a prescription to loading a truck, overtired people are prone to error. And, as you well may know, one little error can cause a lot of trouble and expense.

The expense may come at the cost of fixing the error, or it may come in the form of a lawsuit.

Make sure your HR department understands the critical importance of not scheduling double shifts, or shifts that hardly allow for the employee to get home, get a good rest and show up in the morning again.

Messiness

It's worth it to spend time keeping things neat and orderly in all areas of your workplace.

Whether it's organizing bills and receipts in the cash registers, organizing supplies for the bathroom or organizing inventory in the back room, neatness is so important.

When employees can't find things, they might order inventory you already have in stock, give out the wrong change to customers, or mistakenly tell customers they don't have the product they want to buy.

Worse, messiness breeds accidents.

Boxes haphazardly stocked are likely to tumble on unsuspecting warehouse employees. Items not put away in their place are liable to cause injury when someone steps on them.

It's these kinds of accidents that are entirely preventable. If you can avoid the accident, you can avoid the lawsuit.

Don't leave your workplace open to accidents and lawsuits.

It's the fastest way to lose money, and it's the most preventable.