How To Budget For Health And Safety
By Features Desk
Saturday, March 25, 2017.
Whether you’re a veteran of your environment, health and safety or a complete newcomer, budgeting can be a very tricky process when you’re trying to keep an efficient business afloat. You should always start by considering the business’s objectives and outlook for the year ahead, as well as your biggest department as an independent entity. Here are a few handy tips for budgeting for health and safety changes.
Zoom in on Departments
As soon as you have a decent understanding of your business’s forecast for the year ahead, and how it’s going to achieve its big milestones, the next thing you should do is zoom in on individual departments, their functions and how they’ll achieve them. From there, you can establish how your health and safety will have to support each one for the years ahead of you. Let’s say you have an R&D department that handles hazardous material, and you plan on recruiting more researchers to it. This will mean that you’ll have to carve off a bigger chunk of the budget for things like personal protective equipment, hazardous waste programs and chemical hygiene training. Gathering your heads of departments and discussing individual budgets will make it much easier to identify compliance costs.
From Pixabay
Read Up on Industry Trends and New Regulations
No business niche ever sits still, and new health and safety regulations are surfacing more frequently than ever. When new regulations arise, you may find your company needs additional resources for training your staff or sourcing equipment. Some new piece of legislation affecting premises like yours could mean you need to look into AED machines for sale, or a similar non-negotiable expense. While it’s obviously important to keep on top of what the law states, you also need to make sure you’re paying close attention to any industry trends that may impact your health and safety work. For example, more and more pressure is being placed on all kinds of businesses to be more environmentally responsible. If you don’t take the required, proactive steps to reduce threats to the environment and public health, you could be seen as irresponsible, and do irreparable damage to your brand.
From Flickr
Align your Goals with Health and Safety
Before you even begin to plan out your budget, you need to understand internal expectations of your health and safety on a corporate and executive level. A good health and safety budget needs to support your processes working towards short and long-term goals, and reduce any risks or liabilities you may be facing. Depending on the values of your brand, the stage you’re at in your business plan and the stakeholders involved, you and your colleagues may have to play different roles. One of the most important things to look into is whether or not top health and safety programs going to mesh well with your company culture. Obviously, health and safety regulations exist for a very good reason, and the safety of your employees should be high on your list of priorities. However, there’s no reason to let one budgeting blunder bankrupt you!
