Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of the Small Business Safety Pro.
This week I want to dive into an issue that I see those of us who are responsible for health and safety in a company run into all the time. Getting management support (often financial support) for specific safety initiatives.
Key points at a glance:
· Convincing business’s senior leadership to support safety initiatives, especially if there is a significant cost associated with it can be a challenge.
· The best ways to make your case are around one of 3 arguments:
i) Compliance.
ii) Cost.
iii) Reputation.
· The key is to connect your safety initiative to something your leadership values, whether it’s avoiding risk, controlling cost or building the company’s brand.
Every executive wants their company to have a great safety program with zero accidents and no compliance issues. But most of the time, they have no idea how to get there, especially if they don’t have a background in health and safety.
Also, as we all know, executives and business owners have an overwhelming number of priorities and projects on their plate. Yes, safety is important, but so is controlling costs, customer service, efficient production, marketing, sales, networking, thought leadership … and on and on.
So, as the person responsible for safety in your business, how can you get decision makers to see the value in a specific safety project?
I’ve found there are 3 types of arguments that will resonate with business leaders: Compliance, Cost and Reputation.
Let’s look at these in more detail.
1. Compliance.
This might not be the sexiest argument, but when it comes to getting leadership buy-in, it’s often the most straightforward and effective. For executives who are especially concerned about regulatory exposure, legal liability, or the risk of stop-work orders, compliance is your strongest ally.
The key is to tie your safety initiative directly to specific legal requirements. Don’t generalize — cite the exact section, regulation, or standard. Bring it to the table chapter and verse, with clarity and confidence. When leaders see that the initiative isn’t optional — that it’s a matter of legal obligation — the conversation quickly shifts from “Should we do this?” to “How soon can we implement it?”
And if your leadership operates with integrity — as most do — they’ll recognize that doing the bare minimum to stay compliant isn’t just about avoiding fines. It’s about protecting workers, the organization’s reputation, and their own professional credibility.
2. Cost.
Safety costs money. There’s no way around it. The key to getting support from leadership based on a cost argument is to compare the cost of your safety improvement vs the cost of the accident that your improvement will prevent. You will most likely need to be quite specific with this. If your plan will cost $1000, but can prevent a likely accident costing $10,000, then you have a case.
Often the key is demonstrating the real cost of an accident. A business leader who doesn’t have a strong background in health and safety might look at only the cost of the downtime created by an accident, however this only scratches the surface.
Business costs from an accident include:
· Cost of lost production.
· Cost of manager’s time to investigate the accident.
· Cost to transport the employee to medical care.
· Cost of overtime or hiring a temp employee to replace the injured employee.
· Cost of training the replacement employee.
· Loss of production because the replacement is not as skilled initially as the injured employee.
· Increased Worker’s Compensation premiums.
· Missed deadlines due to lost production.
· Loss of reputation with customers due to missed deadlines or frequent safety incidents.
If you can effectively make leadership aware of the true cost of an incident, you have a better chance of showing them how a small investment in safety can prevent a serious financial setback in the future. Safety should be seen as a cost control measure, not just a compliance issue.
3. Reputation.
Increasingly, businesses are starting to consider safety performance when choosing other businesses to partner with. Reputation is everything in the business world, especially for small businesses that depend on word of mouth, repeat customers and employee loyalty.
Even a single serious incident can damage a company’s reputation and hurt their ability to attract talent, find customers and build partnerships. A solid reputation for safety can be a real asset in building your company’s brand.
Safety isn’t just about following rules, it’s about credibility. Would you want to buy from, or partner with, a company that cuts corners on safety?
Convincing management to support safety initiatives requires that you know what they value – avoiding risks, controlling costs and protecting the brand’s reputation. Finding a way to connect safety improvements to those goals is the key to building a compelling argument.
That’s it for this week, Small Business Safety Pro is published every Tuesday on Substack and LinkedIn.
As mentioned last week, I will be moving the newsletter off the LinkedIn platform and exclusively on to Substack to ensure that editions don’t get lock in the LinkedIn algorithm and ensure subscribers have a chance to access every post. Please consider subscribing via Substack at www.smallbusinesssafetypro.com so you don’t miss a thing!
Cheers,
Dan.