SAP® GRC For Dummies®

Chapter 10. Keeping Employees Healthy and Safe

Just as your first priority is to maintain the soundness of your own mind and body, so too should your company's first order of business be to ensure that the people in it are always healthy and safe. After all, it stands to reason: Your people are the lifeblood of your business — literally. Injured or sick employees present the unwelcome specter of misery and loss; recent estimates put the costs associated with occupational injuries and illness near $170 billion: costs that are not receiving the support of government subsidies but are simply draining your company's coffers. Healthy people, on the other hand, are happy people, and happy people make productive, happy businesses. At the end of the day, it's as simple as understanding that the shin-bone is connected to the knee-bone.

The mere thought that your company could be a major contributor to the astronomical costs associated with yearly occupational injuries and illnesses — again, the number is quickly rising toward the $200 billion mark — should be enough to send you and your top team members running to the board room for an emergency summit on how to design and institute a health and safety program comprehensive enough to protect the well-being of your employees, vendors, contractors, and visitors.

Perhaps you have already begun. If so, our hats are off. If, however, you have not begun, but are about to or if you are faced with islands of nonintegrated information, it's important ...