Have you ever stopped to think what the consequences might be if you had a major health & safety incident in your business? What would you need to do to put things right; that’s if you could and what resources would this require and could your business survive?

We have seen in the past a number of businesses that perhaps didn’t put the necessary effort into health & safety and when it went wrong badly suffered the consequences.

One the HSE shared with us was prosecuted and fined £25k for serious health & safety failings. Unfortunately for the business this was not the end of the impact on them; they contacted the HSE inspector six months later to request their case was removed from the HSE name and shame database. Why they did this was because of the negative publicity costs resulting in the business losing multiple orders and 50 staff had to be laid off. The HSE are unable to remove them and therefore their health & safety failings were prominent on Google searches for all to see.

Clearly not a good position for any business but generally one not considered until too late. Which is why we think you should be asking yourself could health & safety be your businesses Achilles heel? Rather than wait to find out why not start to ask some searching questions; you might be surprised by the answers.