Harriman Oyofo: Safety as an Investment for Smart Businesses

What is safety? Bloody waste of time and money! Really?

No doubt, there are some business owners who may think, feel and act like safety is a waste of time and money; an abstract quantity and a studied distraction from the all-important business of production. But can there be many of them around today, still in business and turning a profit? Not a lot, I would imagine. Broadly speaking, quite a number of business outfits in Nigeria have little or no time for ‘Safety’ except in circumstances completely beyond control. Never mind that they usually have huge ‘SAFETY FIRST’ signs hung conspicuously across their front gates.

For example, I once had the privilege to advise a then ‘big time’ oilfield civil contractor in Port Harcourt to always ensure the indicator gauges on his tar boiler were free of soot and tar drippings so they could be easily readable because it was unsafe for the numerals to be obscured. He scoffed loudly saying “you theoretical Shell engineers are truly funny. What can be unsafe in a common pressure and temperature indicator?” I explained that if you can’t sight them correctly and easily, you won’t be able to tell when there’s a temperature or pressure spike due to some grave malfunction within the boiler. He waved me off impatiently. And that was that.

Two weeks later he rushed into my office looking extremely agitated saying some terrible accident had happened 3 days after our encounter. According to him, his Tar Boiler exploded and the tank was hauled some 200m into a neighbouring high density dwelling resulting in instant death of three occupants, with seven others severely burnt in the ensuing inferno. So sorry was all I could mutter, knowing how that horrible occurrence could have been prevented with minimum fuss but needless to add that his business nose-dived in the years following the incident.

So it simply isn't logical to expect a business operating with scant regards for safety to stay afloat for any appreciable length of time because workplace accidents cost you money, whether you realize it or not. Those accidents and incidents steadily chip away at your bottom line is no longer news. Proving it is not rocket science either. You just have to look to see it. Each so-called accident dislocates the day's plans and imposes a new agenda on everyone, the individual (or individuals), organization and clients. It extends the boundaries of your budgetary expenditure, taxes your reserves, frays your corporate nerves, downgrades employee morale, blots product quality, pushes deadlines further afield and puts a big question mark on your reliability as a business service provider. Accidents do your business reputation no good, especially when the consequences spill over your boundary fence to next door. They win you no new friends but are sure to scare a few old ones away each time. No one would want to be identified as a friend of a workplace where life, limb and property are under constant threat of insufficiently managed exposures.

Taken together, an accident is a killer in every sense of the word and in more ways than one. So it makes little sense to treat your business’ operational safety with kid gloves. To turn a sustainable profit, keep you out of debt and secure your business' future, safe plant, safe systems of work and safe environment for work must rank high in the business considerations. Pinching pennies in the name of intangible savings only leads to troubles foretold. Those who coined the phrase "Penny wise, pound foolish", most surely knew a thing or two about workplace safety management long before our time.

So next time you hear someone jeer at safety just calmly remind yourself and your crew that it pays to get it right first time for your business to stay viable.

That, in a nutshell, is what Safety is.

Harriman Oyofo is CEO, Mann Associates Ltd., Nigeria. 

 

Do you have an opinion on the business/economic environment in your country and wish to share your views with thousands of business professionals in Africa and international? Please contact andrea@africabusinesscommunities.com with your articles and blogs.