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Safety hazards in the workplace have been around for a long time. When employers are asked why a specific or obvious hazard exists, the answers tend to reflect their organization’s safety culture or attitude. Here are the top five most-often heard excuses for not addressing hazards in the workplace.

Excuse #5: “That would cost too much time or money to fix.”

What is the value of a life ? The appropriate responses would be: 1) Fix the hazard. 2) Restrict access to the hazard through the use of physical barriers. 3) Discontinue the activity until the proper equipment or training is available.

Excuse #4: “That’s why we have insurance.”

This excuse will not endear you to your insurance company, and makes the dangerous assumption that every hazard is a covered cause of loss. Keep in mind that you will probably always be able to purchase insurance in spite of whatever hazard is present – it just may cost you significantly more or result in exclusions on your policies. Also, your time is valuable. How much time will you spend filling out accident reports, filing a claim, and attending depositions and possibly a trial? It probably would have taken less time to fix the hazard.

Excuse #3: “That’s not my job.”

Safety is everyone’s job. If the staff doesn’t take ownership of safety effort’s or if they feel they don’t have the authority to address hazards quickly, you will likely have a safety culture of indifference. In court, nothing will hurt your defense more than communicating the message, “we don’t care.”

Excuse #2: “But, we’ve always done it that way.”

This is also known as “the lame admission of not keeping up with industry standards” excuse or “we’re too lazy to evaluate our programs and facilities to know better” excuse. Bringing in expert consultants from outside your organization is not only a good method of improving your facilities and programs, it’s also a great method to confirm that you are doing things correctly.

Excuse #1: “That’s never been a problem for us before.”

A successful risk management program not only responds to injuries, it anticipates hazards. When someone points out a hazard, the appropriate response is, “thanks for telling me about that. I’ll fix it right away.”

Risk management and safety is everyone’s job. Your organization’s risk management culture has many rewards, such as preventing injuries and property losses and saving time by not needing to fill out accident and claim reports.