Many occupational health and safety laws and regulations are on the books in many countries, designed not to take away freedoms in how you choose to do your job, as much as to protect the company and fellow workers when an incident occurs at the workplace that may result in an injury or the worker or damage to equipment at the work site.

[Photo courtesy of Flickr user Jonathan_Hawkins]Safety audits and inspections can be vital in keeping a workplace safe. But if you cut corners – even when no one gets hurt – you still could be subject to fines by health and safety officials.

Many companies follow through on these regulations by installing a workplace safety officer, or hiring an outside contractor of consultant to implement a safety program as part of a due-diligence effort by companies to ensure safety of their workers. These companies usually know the cost of an incident could be more than the investment in the program or the safety officer in the first place. That safety officer’s salary could be justified in just one incident that results in a worker’s death or serious injury when the company adds up hospital bills, workers compensation, possible legal costs, costs of training and paying a replacement worker, etc.

But in many places, if an incident occurs due to a safety violation and no one got hurt, did the incident actually happen?

Not exactly.

There is an expectation that every incident – even if no one gets injured and no equipment is damaged – which flows outside of the ordinary execution of job duties, will have an incident report filed.  While in some places this is not required, these documents an be useful in helping to spot a pattern of concern in regards to safety – perhaps an indicator of something that may need to be fixed boefre someone actually does get hurt. But these documents can also be useful iin an investigation if and when an injury-inducing incident occurs. And while a non-injury incident may not cost much money on the surface  other than the time to fill out an incident report, or course – if a safety officer  is witness to the incident and notices a safety violation surrounding the icident, that officer may have the authority to hand out  ticket for the violation (similar to a traffic or parking ticket) and/or an administrative fine.

Government safety officers conduct inspections of facilities and work sites periodically, and if in the process of conducting the inspection or evaluation they notice an active safety violation occurring, those officers could present an on-the-spot citation  with a fine attached that could range from $100 to $500 – even if there is no immediate safety danger or no incident occurring as a result of the violation.

The other, more drastic step could come as part of an incident investigation after a serious injury had taken place. If safety measures were not in place and there seemed to be a disregard for proper procedures, the the area health and safety commission may hand down administrative fines of as much as $10,000 per violation per day. In other words, if a safety violation is noted and a find imposed, that fine is not a one-time thing; that fine is imposed every single day that the violation is not resolved. So if here is a faulty piece of equipment that causes injuries and it takes a company a week to replace or fix that equipment, then the company will have to pay not only for the safer equipment but also whatever administrative fine, times the number of days from the note of the violatuion until the resolution and approved inspection by a safety official.

This is just a little something to keep in mind. It’s not enough to avoid injuries when it comes to safety – oftentimes it could be just the matter of having a risky incident itself that could cost the company, a supervisor, a worker or a contractor some money. Diligence and vigilance are the key for an effective safety program that not only reduces injuries and illnesses, but also reduces the incidents that expose workers to injury and illness in the first place.