For most organisations, all business decisions come back to one central deciding factor.
To paraphrase Jerry Maguire . . . Show me the ROI.
Successful organisations view safety as an important business asset and spending on HSEQ an investment in building this asset. But while drawing a direct connection between spending and return on investment may be relatively straightforward for some departments, it’s not quite as cut and dry for the HSEQ team.
Let’s start with the parts of HSEQ that we can measure.
Implementing an integrated, flexible and customised HSEQ system plays an important role in simplifying business processes. Removing manual elements that can slow down information capture and stand in the way of your executive team having the information they need to make impactful decisions. And replacing them with digital systems that simply compile and integrate data from around the business.
Measuring ROI is relatively straight forward in this area. While you may not be able to capture the ROI gained from such easy access to business data and the resulting effect that has on the organisation, you can measure its impact on resources.
With a digital and integrated system, there are significant savings to be had around additional resourcing which would need to be brought on board to capture data, input data into business systems, compile reports and interrogate business information. This is a simple calculation of the hours that would be required to manage these data processes and meet the internal business requirements.
The other side of the HSEQ coin, however, is much more difficult to measure.
This is because businesses often only notice the impact of HSEQ when it’s not working. Employees are getting injured. Incidents are happening on site. And the resulting business impacts are being felt across the board.
When an HSEQ system is working at its best, an organisation often doesn’t understand what could be happening if the HSEQ system wasn’t in place. This ROI from HSEQ spend is incredibly difficult to measure.
Fortunately, I’m not finishing the article there.
Some of the brightest minds in the industry have dedicated their time and resources to investigating the true ROI of HSEQ interventions.
Australian compensation body, Comcare, has found that every dollar invested in health and safety programs and processes generates an average return of $5.81. And that’s on top of the impacts companies with strong health and safety systems see in decreased sick leave/absenteeism (25.3%), decreased workers compensation costs (40.7%) and decreased disability management costs (24.2%).
All of these, combined with the decrease in risk that’s gained from a strong HSEQ management system, result in significant return for the business from their HSEQ focus. Giving HSEQ teams the support to have an important conversation with management teams about investment in keeping their people safe.
Showing HSEQ teams the money will only result in your business showing you even more.
