Thousands of companies have millions of dollars in latent profits buried in their operations, yet only a handful will mine them to their full advantage.

Since 2005, HR Metrix® has been helping a diverse array of businesses fully exploit their Mother Lode of hidden profits.

Without question, the most profitable way to reduce operating costs, increase productivity, and boost employee morale is to implement effective systems for health & safety and injury management.

Yet what does the mediocre majority do when they need to trim costs?

When a poorly run company decides to cut costs, it usually means heads will roll, which invariably results in demoralized and fearful employees whose focus is no longer squarely on their work, but on worrying about whether their own head is next to go on the block.

Not surprisingly, after each swing of the axe, the survivors languish under a pall of doom and gloom, yet they’re expected to pick up the slack of the dearly departed and be grateful that at least they still have a job. Go figure.

The hack and sack method of cutting costs is the preferred cost containment strategy of big dumb companies.

The net result is reduced productivity, increased time-loss; fewer resources to service dissatisfied customers; a plummeting business reputation and—surprise, surprise—further erosion of the bottom line which the cost-cutting measures were supposed to improve. In short, it’s a horror show!

Clearly, smart companies avoid even getting into this predicament in the first place. They realize that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Show me the money

Hopefully, your business isn’t on the ropes and you don’t have to resort to hacking resources and sacking people.

So if you haven’t started wielding an axe yet like some corporate Attila the Hun, and you’re wisely looking for a better way to improve both your bottom line and employee morale, then look no further than your current occupational health & safety (OHS) and Return-To-Work (RTW) practices. Depending on what you decide, these things can either become a hidden gold mine to tap into or a land mine to step on.

Your health and safety program has the potential to become either a well-managed gold mine, or a Go Directly to Jail sentence.

When done right, OHS/RTW systems are the next best things to having a license to print money. But when done wrong, they can literally bankrupt your business and even land you in jail. Therefore, you need to understand what the potential risks and rewards of your decisions are as they relate to health and safety.

If you do nothing else, you should at least find out what your potential payout or payback is on 3 things:

1. What your current personal legal risk is: You need to fully understand what the law has to say about you and Due Diligence. This has the potential to personally bankrupt you as an individual and even result in jail time, so do the smart thing and find out what your level of risk is given the way your business is currently operating, no matter whether you own the company or simply manage a facet of it.
2. How an effective OHS/RTW system will save your company a staggering sum of money that it is currently losing through employee time-loss. The numbers will astound you.
3. How a Certificate of Recognition (COR) for best practices in OHS and RTW will significantly improve the profitability of your business and give you a decisive competitive advantage in your industry. The savings can be in the millions of dollars depending on the size of your company’s payroll. One of our clients received a payback of $1.5 million in their first year alone!

What’s the next step?

Find out what your current level of risk is—It’s appropriately called, doing your Due Diligence.