“Companies with the most effective Health and productivity programs experience superior human capital and financial outcomes” 1

With significant experience in Human Resources and with the WSIB, Robert Smith has seen first hand how employee engagement can significantly impact workplace safety.  He was kind enough to provide this very interesting blog post for us.

Today, in our competitive business environment, it is vital to have employees at work and actively engaged and this is fast becoming the primary global workforce. Proactive and progressive CEOs, CFOs and HR executives are now starting to examine different ways to tackle the challenges of rising health care and disability costs, lost productivity and high employee turnover.1

This means that leading companies are identifying the root causes of health care cost increases and productivity erosion and strengthening the link between health and employee effectiveness. A report by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHEM) estimates that by strengthening engagement, MolsonCoors saved more than $1.7 million in one year - citing one example where the average cost of a "safety incident" for an engaged employee was $63, compared with the average of $392 for a disengaged employee.

In their 2009/2010 Staying@Work Report, Watson Wyatt estimates direct and indirect health costs, including Workers Compensation, Long and Short Term Disability, unplanned and sick leave absences, medical costs, overtime, replacement worker costs, workstation modification and job accommodation and health management programs, account for 12.6% of total payroll costs.

While having engaged employees may not prevent workplace accidents, it is obvious that individual “incident” costs are most likely to be significantly less because your employees feel acknowledged, part of the team and want to stay in their work environment. It is clear that this is a strategy that influences many aspects of business performance and is well worth the investment.

1 2009/2010 Staying@Work Report Originally published by Watson Wyatt Worldwide

Robert Smith is the co-founder and managing partner of Injury Management Solutions providing claims management services from their Dundas location. ( www.InjuryMangementSolutions.ca)