What is the Cost of Safety?

People don’t like to talk about it, but there are costs to safety. The standard reply to satisfy legal is:

“We comply with all regulations to keep our people safe”

There are always tradeoffs when it comes to safety. If you look at most evacuation drills that take place, you will find that companies don’t always invest in the best solutions for tracking people to ensure that they get out of a building safely. The perception often is that such a system will be too expensive and difficult to implement. However, perceptions do not always match up with reality when it comes to financial costs or actual personal safety costs. In a previous blog post, we talk about the cost of long lines. Similarly, just from a base financial standpoint, having an electronic system in place can make sense as it can result in more time on the job for your employees. The red column below shows the savings an employer can realize by completing their fire drills in less time and getting their employees back to being productive – for every fire drill performed!

As you can see from the table, replacing the manual method with an electronic solution can save a company thousands of dollars very quickly. Click here for an actual copy of the spreadsheet to calculate how much your company is spending for employees to participate in an evacuation drill. Additionally, employers should factor in the money lost from additional time that their employees are not generating revenue for them. We had one employer who calculated that when his line went down, he was losing $200 in profits every minute! He was paying employees for standing around and not generating profits for their work!

Electronic role call systems such as our XPressEntry System can pay for themselves very quickly by enabling employees to get back to work faster. And this is before the costs of employee safety have been introduced.

No one looks forward to practicing evacuation drills, so why not get them finished faster?

Interested in improving evacuation management for your company?
Give Telaeris a call at 858-627-9700 for a free consultation today.