The recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has brutally brought to the forefront of people’s minds what price can and should be put on safety. Eleven people lost their lives immediately, and the aftermath threatens the livelihood of thousands more as well as potentially hundreds of thousands of animals, fish and square kilometers of wildlife reserve.There is an important axiom in business that there is no point in spending too little on a solution that ends up not working when it is called upon, and that axiom suggests that it would be worthwhile overspending on a solution since doing so also incorporates a sum to cover risk, and if one is going to incorporate such a sum anyway one might as well use that to widen the budget and buy a better product or solution.
Depending on the sector of business, the costs of safety may only need to take into account the safety of the companies own employees, or the solution could be vastly more expensive because it also must ensure the safety of the public or the environment. Even if a business is not brought to a standstill itself by an emergency such as a spillage, this does not diminish the emergency of the spillage which may have later effects such as fines or cleanup costs that, although they don’t stop the business, can damage its profits, reputation and standing.
All of these things can have a cascading effect – a company that does not maintain high standards and be seen to do so, may lose business purely on this reputation. It may be able to handle the contract from a practical point of view, but may find itself eliminated from the bidding if the contract is environmentally or politically sensitive purely for having the “wrong” reputation.
From these factors along we can see that the answer to the question “what price for safety?” is not an easy question to answer. Clearly solutions must take into account all of these factors which will affect not only the price of the solution but could potentially drive up the costs of implementing it – but equally, can a company really afford not to spend the extra resources, since if it does not and the worst case does happen it has effectively consigned itself to huge drops in profit, if not potential bankruptcy .
Plus there is the legal standpoint. The law is unrelenting when it comes to safety, particularly public safety. Some types of companies can even be forced to close until they comply with safety laws by government inspectors, some of whom are not obliged to provide any warning of impending inspection and assessment. A contingency put in place to safeguard the health and lives of workers that fails is going to lead to investigations, fines, loss of reputation and the subsequent damage that can take years of careful rebuilding to undo. Such a contingency was not only ineffective but was a waste of money from the start since it was money spent that ultimately, when the solution was implemented, proved to be a waste of resources from the outset.
Another factor in even the most efficient and effective safety procedure is that without the proper training to carry it out it is doomed to fail, not because it is bad or ineffective but because money was incorrectly saved in teaching the employees how to effectively implement the solution. In this case the contingency plan itself may have been adequate, but failed only due to lack of resources allocated to training. This can lead to arguments between departments about whose budget is used to train workers to deal with the contingency solution; the training department or the contingency planning department. Such conflict may, in multinational companies, be inevitable but should always be minimized lest it end up becoming a danger in itself and threatening the solution altogether.
Ultimately a solution that, in its implementation, puts employees potentially in more danger than not using that solution is not a viable solution, because should an accident occur in the implementation it compounds the problem rather than solving the problem. Thus, safety should be the paramount deciding factor on whether or not a solution is viable or workable.
As British Petroleum found out with the Deepwater Horizon, discussion of what safety measures could have been put in place after something has gone wrong is ultimately more damaging than carefully planning before a project starts what safety measures can be put in place that may be used in the event of emergency. From equipment to employee training to a solid plan, safety must play a part in the contingency plan from start to finish. If it does not, the effects can be catastrophic both immediately and for years or even decades to come.