Although accidents are unavoidable, many businesses usually forgo their employees’ safety and security while rushing to meet production targets and sales, making them rampant. Knowing the consequences of accidents can impact the management to act swiftly to prevent such accidents from happening. Workplace injuries usually have severe consequences, both to the management and the employees. Such a situation is worse if it happens to a reputable company. What are these consequences?
There are two main types of consequences; the direct losses and the indirect ones. Here is a list of some aspects of workplace injury consequences you should take note of.
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1. Lost Productivity
When there is a significant accident, employees and everyone at the workplace fail to work, creating a production loss. It makes the company’s operations stop, depending on the type of accident. The more time it takes, the greater the loss to the company. Even if the company gets the co-workers to salvage the situation, added responsibilities may harm the work quality, focus, and timing. Being an indirect cost will make the company suffer both in productivity and incur extra charges to pay for added time.
2. Medical Compensation
Medical compensation is a direct expense that affects companies in case of accidents at workplaces. According to law experts, any employee who has suffered from an accident has a right to get workers’ compensation while recuperating at the hospital or home. This type of payment is straightforward but sometimes gets affected by guidelines that determine if an individual will get compensated or not.
Some procedures need to be followed before any employee receives compensation. Such compensations differ according to the nature of the accident, type of employee, and company. Sometimes, the payment fails to happen when it’s found the accident was deliberate.
3. Workplace Injuries and Death Benefits
Any accident can result in injuries or death, depending on its impact. When such occurs, the company gets affected since it has to pay for the injuries claim or pay the death benefits. According to attorneys at PatinoLawOffice.com, injuries of the person or death couldn’t have occurred if not present at the workplace, and this means they should get compensated for injuries or death. In case of death, the deceased family members will get compensation depending on how much they relied on the employee. These direct costs make the company act quickly under the law.
4. Investigations and Record-keeping
Another consequence that befalls the company is the costs incurred when investigating and keeping records of the accident. According to the law, any accident needs to be investigated, and the cause needs to be prevented from reoccurring. Such investigation and record-keeping will incur extra costs since companies are required to hire professionals. Through such experiments, companies will tell the cause of the accident and measures to prevent future occurrences.
They will determine if they will get compensated by insurance companies or pay for the injuries. The cause of the accident will significantly resolve any compensation and insurance claims.
5. Training Replacement Workers
If employees get bedridden for a long time in fatal accidents, they will have to find replacement employees who will carry the victims’ duties. The sourcing and training courses aren’t planned and will be a burden to any company, whether large or small. Hiring and training of any employee is an expensive affair.
It costs the company both time and money. The company can offer to conduct job training, whereas the new employees will be working as they learn or full training whereby production has to stop, creating losses to the company. New employees will also make additional costs since they will have salaries, just like the injured ones.
6. The Company Reputation
The company’s reputation is always at stake when accidents happen at the workplace. The damaged reputation is still with the clients and business partners and probably individuals who would like to work with the company, mostly if it occurs frequently. No one prefers working with a company prone to accidents and such. Companies that suffer from frequent accidents lose financing from banks, lose confidence from insurance companies, and have their sales affected.
Other severe effects that happen to workplaces are loss of time and money due to damages, distorted employer-employee relationships, psychological impacts on the employees, physical challenges, and other financial costs.
No company likes getting into accidents. But when such happens, action needs to be taken immediately to revert or prevent more losses from incurring. The company also needs to put up measures after the accident to prevent further occurrences. The company should also consider talking to clients and stakeholders to ensure their good reputation is maintained.
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