Good safety is good business: Or, do more injuries increase the risk of business insolvency? Yes, according to this 2023 Spanish study.
This studied 344 Majorca construction firms over seven years to understand the relationship between reported incidents and organisational survival.
They found:
- Lower accident rates can improve company earnings
- Evidence of the higher the accidents in a company the lower its probability of survival.
- The risk of bankruptcy increases as the number of accidents rises.
Now, I expect many people will immediately think “well, duh”. But two immediate thoughts:
1) There’s a subtle difference between beliefs, or experience, and published empirical evidence; even the ‘obvious’ stuff should be tested
2) Another larger-sampled study found a contrary relationship – that firms with more reported incidents were likely to last longer (link to that study below).
As always, the study had limitations (no less relying on reported incidents).
Ref: Carretero-Gómez, J. M., Forteza, F. J., & Estudillo, B. (2023). Linking occupational accidents and construction firm survival. Journal of safety research, 85, 485-491.
Study link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsr.2023.05.002
Other survival study: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tension-between-worker-safety-organization-survival-ben-hutchinson
My site with more reviews: https://safety177496371.wordpress.com
Safety & Performance Research Summaries 
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