It doesn’t matter what type of industry your business is in, there will always be a strong possibility of an unwanted accident, damage to your business materials and even workplace injuries. Any activity that involves people in dangerous situations – such as working with hazardous chemicals or in a crowded warehouse – exposes people to hazards and unless you foresee the potential dangers in these hazards, you could end up costing your business money that it just doesn’t have. Every single person that you bring into your company has the entitlement to work safely, and as the leader of a company it’s your responsibility and your best interest to ensure that they have that health and safety training that keeps them secure.

One of the best ways that you can make sure that people have the information that they need with regard to health and safety is offering a comprehensive training programme. If your business is built on manufacturing products, you’d need to have a different level of health and safety compared to other companies. Your staff are going to be working with large machinery in a crowded warehouse or plant. There will be some people working with dangerous pieces of equipment – not because the equipment itself is the danger, but how it’s used. You can bring in an outside packaging company like CLSmith.com to provide you with the packaging you need for hazardous materials, but unless you teach your staff how to handle hazardous material in the first place, there is still a danger of an accident occurring.

Providing effective health and safety training can help the people that work for you to learn how to work safely for themselves and for the others around them. Health and safety training doesn’t just help your staff, though, it helps your bottom line. Your business needs its reputation to be able to be successful. People will review what you do so that others can decide whether what you do is important for them and whether your business services are worth using. If your company is known as one with difficult and unsafe business practices, you’re not going to get anywhere. Customers and business clients will not use you, because you’re the rogue one to deal with. Those contracts that you have managed to secure could easily cancel their work with you, because they will find out that you are the type of company that puts its people at risk – and all because you don’t offer effective, stringent and transparent safety training to staff. It has a huge knock-on effect to your finances, because it’s not just the clients that are affected if you don’t offer health and safety training.

Deciding against a proper health and safety training course for each member of staff can be detrimental to your reputation as an employer, too. Social media has now made it possible for people to review and discuss their employment in a public forum. Bad reviews stick out way more than the good reviews, and you need to be able to combat those reviews. Not offering health and safety training isn’t something that should be reviewed though, because if your business is in manufacturing, health and safety should already be at the very top of your priority list. Health and safety courses can be easily overlooked by managers in a company. You start a business and you’re rushed off your feet. However, being busy is not a good reason to neglect your staff and their health and wellbeing. Some health and safety training can mean the difference between life and death, and so you can’t afford to miss it.

While training courses can be seen as a costly disruption to a business, you should consider it – instead – to be an investment. The money that you allocate in your budget as a company is an investment in a secure future, happy employees and a strong reputation as a brand that cares about its staff. Every year, more and more staff around the world are injured in the workplace in completely avoidable circumstances. Circumstances that would never have been apparent had they had the right health and safety advice and information. The benefits are just too vast to miss out, and if you really need any more convincing that your employees could benefit from your comprehensive training schemes, here are a few select reasons why you should give it a solid go.

Your Business Is a Risk

Every single workplace in the world has an element of risk, whether it’s a flight of stairs that hasn’t had reflective strips built onto it, or it’s hazardous materials that hasn’t been labelled correctly. The thing is, many employees believe that their particular role doesn’t carry a risk, and so they don’t practice working safely. This happens because they didn’t know any better. As an employer, you have to pretend that your staff know absolutely nothing about their jobs and teach them how to do them in the safe manner that you wish them to. The fatality rate in a SME manufacturing business is much more than that of a large business, and if you want to avoid being another statistic, offer the right training before the job begins.

Staff Productivity Depends on You

It may seem like a box-ticking exercise, but arranging health and safety training for your staff has great returns on it. Treating your people well is so important if you don’t want them to end up using your internet to find another job. Taking the time to show an interest in the health and wellbeing of your employees by offering them a training programme that rivals all training programmes can make sure that they work better and more productively, and that they know that you care about them. It also covers your back with insurance, because you’ve done everything possible to ensure that people know how to conduct themselves in the workplace. This effort that you put in will have a positive effect on your staff and how they interact with you.

You’re Being Legal

Your business – especially in manufacturing – is lawfully required to provide the most health and safety training possible. It is your duty as an employer to make sure that your people are adequately trained and compliant with health and safety regulations. When you have people starting a new job, training should be built into their onboarding. They should have at least two weeks of proper health and safety training to know that they are going to be able to work in an environment that will support their health and keep them as safe as possible while they’re on the job.

You Could Avoid Being Sued

It’s a nightmare for an employer to be the subject of a lawsuit, and yet it happens all too often in the workplace. It doesn’t matter how large or how small the risk of injury in your workplace, that risk should be as close to 0% as possible. If you have an even 1% chance that people could be injured while they are carrying out their regular duties, you need to comply with regulations to ensure that this will not happen to the best of your abilities. The reason? Being sued is one of the worst things that could happen to a business. Not only are you embroiled in a lawsuit that will be made public, but you are going to have your insurance premiums pushed up, your reputation shot and you could even go bankrupt. One serious injury in your workplace could hit you with a compensation claim so large that you could end up shrinking your business down to accommodate the money you’d have lost to the lawsuit. This could see you going out of business – and all because you didn’t invest a little cash in good health and safety training.

You’ll Look Good

Reputation for a business is a big deal and unless you plan to stay off the business radar, you need to consider your image carefully in your business. A compliant business is viewed favourably by clients and by the wider public, and not just for the fact that people are safe, but because your staff will know that they work for a reputable business. Retaining talent is a big deal and if you’re not working hard to retain that talent, you are going to lose them. This is not a good thing in the eyes of your investors, and it could have an impact on your brand. Good health and safety training makes you look good – and if you know you look good, you can work harder.

In the end, you’re going to be saving money in your business by paying for good health and safety training. With no litigation costs, fines and compensation to pay out, you’re going to have more cash to play with instead. There really is no good reason to NOT offer a comprehensive training programme. So, plan it today and your tomorrow will be a healthy financial future.