The Costs of Incidents
As seen in the picture of the iceberg, there are two sides of this iceberg. The side that can be seen outside and the side that can not be seen that’s under water. Discussing different incidents can have different costs, they will have similar costs though. Looking at the top of the iceberg would be the visible costs, for example the costs to repair a piece of damaged equipment or the costs to fix an injury. Depending on the injury or damage to equipment, the costs can skyrocket. An example of an injury would be someone who had multiple injuries, breaking multiple bones, possibly severing an artery could potentially cost thousands and thousands of dollars. An example of equipment damage could be from the loss of an engine from failure of checking the oil, causing the engine to blow.
Let’s look at both incidents separately and see how these costs can affect people and companies. First let’s discuss the injury I brought up, above. A person who have had multiple injuries in an incident, either at work or outside of work can be very costly. The time it takes to fix the injuries can depend on different factors and could take time in the long run to properly fix the injuries and in some cases they may not be able to be fixed completely.
Next, we have to look at the costs it takes to rehabilitate this person and bring them up to 100%, if possible. There may be times, that this person may not be able to return to 100%, then what?
Next we have to discuss how long this person will be out of work, due to healing and rehabilitation. This person could possibly be out of work from 6 months to a year, or more. During this time this person is out of work, who is paying for the monthly house payments, or rent? Who’s paying for the food, and utilities? This is the underlying costs you don’t see, this is the part of that iceberg you don’t see that’s below the water. If this was a work related injury, yes there would be some type of workers compensation. In most cases, the injured person would only receive 2/3 of their normal pay, which would reduce what they normally receive. This would still put a burden on a second person to make up for the loss of what that person was normally making. This also would cause a problem at work as this person is no longer working and the company would need to have someone, or others step up to make up for the work the injured person was doing. Doing this most likely will cause stress to the people who now must do the extra work of the person who is out injured. What if this person wasn’t injured at work, if this person doesn’t have some type of disability insurance, who then will take care of all the bills coming in? The stress of a second person or potentially even a son or daughter needing to pickup for what this person was bringing in can also be a hidden cost.
Now let’s look at the damage to the equipment regarding the blown engine. Yes, we know the costs of what a new/used engine would take to replace the old one, there are even more costs to consider. How much time will it take for the new engine to be delivered to the shop? How much time will it take to remove the old engine and get everything ready to put in the new/used engine? While this equipment is down, do you have equipment to replace the equipment that is out of service? If you do not have replaceable equipment, what type of profit loss will take place due to the equipment being down? All of these above costs are the hidden costs, if the equipment is down, what will the employees be doing until it is back up and running?
Most if not all incidents are preventable. If at work you are properly filling out your Job Safety Analysis (JSA), Job Hazard Analysis (JHA), or Job Safety, Environmental Analysis (JSEA). These forms can really help you understand the potential hazards you can face, along with what you can do to not allow those hazard to affect you. Along with these forms there are near miss, or some call them near hit forms. These near miss forms are forms you can use to pass along the potential incident that could have happened, yet didn’t as you were able to stop it, before it caused an incident.
Now for those who had these incidents away from work, what examples from what you learned from work and other life skills would help you from being involved in an incident that could cause costs, that could be prevented?
Every decision you make in life, can affect you and those around you. It’s important to look at everything written above to understand what costs you don’t want to incur, if you just do things safer and think before doing something that could cost you.