If an employee is greatly affected in the workplace, there will be a huge impact on the cost of employer and also the worker. The impact is normally the time taken away from work which is recorded as a lost time injury ( Coates, 214) . In addition, there will be a loss in productive time as workers will not be able to produce with total efficiency as a result of the poorly designed work procedures or equipment thus leading to sore or tired muscles. Poor working conditions may also contribute to making the workers stay away from work or avoid working in certain time. Also, poor working conditions and quality job design might also increase staff turnover. Most employees understand the direct wage costs associated with injury absence however they are sometimes not in a position to understand the ‘hidden’ or ‘additional’ costs. Numerous attempts have been carried out to calculate these additional costs.
A survey which was carried out in Australia showed that the estimated hidden costs were between zero and 3.5times the wages for semi-skilled or unskilled workers ( Van et al., 2016) . Reduced investments and lower profits for a company are the outcomes of unnecessary costs as a result of poor or unsafe working conditions. Relevant costs should be incorporated in the analysis in order to compare between occupational safety and health and funding requests and the conflicting funding demands. In order to do this, the costs incurred due to work injury and disease should be calculated and the costs’ relative importance determined for every workplace ( Van et al., 2016) This is the foundation for the cost-benefit analysis (CBA).
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The CBA tool is a time-based model which is centered upon the difference in certain aspects of the workplace before and after an intervention. This tools measures all the important parameters which contribute to a service or product. It needs a lot of data however through assessing the total costs of employment and loses associated as a result of injury or poor design workstations, the model is specific to a certain organization, and it is a better replication of the employment costs. It also shows the costs and benefits that the employee brings into the organization ( Coates, 2014) . In CBA, every benefits and cost are calculated using the same unit of measure which is usually money then a comparison is made between various options. It is a calculated methodology which is used for valuing benefits and costs so that wide comparisons can be made between safety risk decline measures on a regular basis . When the safety measures are put into consideration, and the cost is lower than the monetary value of the safety benefit, an improvement needs to be implemented in the organization. On the other hand, when the costs are less than the monetary value, duty holders need to make professional judgment. In making these judgments, the level of uncertainty in assessing the safety and costs benefits and also the range of potential safety consequences are put into consideration. CBA helps in the process of decision making by providing monetary values to the costs and benefits and by making a comparison of such quantities. The analysis can aid in making a cognizant choice between risk reduction options ( Dwyer et al., 2016) .
Safety management looks for cost-effective solution and to maintain and achieve a safety level which obeys the defined goals, policies and requirements. The cost-benefit analysis is used to achieve the objectives and goals of business . These analyses are too great extent centered upon statistically expected values such as Fatal Accident Rate (FAR), Potential Loss of Life (PLL) and Expected Net Present Values (NPV). FAR is the expected number of fatalities as a result of accidental actions, PLL refers to the statistical number of the lives lost due accidents and NPV is the expected present values of future net cash flows of an investment subtracted from the initial investment. The use of expected cost-benefit analysis tends to give out a rational framework for making a decision during uncertainties. The loss of values due to accidents contributes to uncertainty and has a small effect in explaining differences in the corporate production values.
However, the outcomes of possible accidents are usually very uncertain and hard to predict. This means that there is a risk of negative surprises. Besides, the values of production do not include the values of life and the environment. These values could be different from the viewpoint of a firm as compared to society’s or personal point of view ( Del Fava et al., 2012) . Therefore, there is a need for the business to have a wider perspective on uncertainty rather than using expected values. To define what is the best concept, measure or arrangement , the business requires addressing the probability of huge accidents and risk perception. The business should deal with every uncertainty and think along the values of precautionary, social responsibility and robustness and also have a behavior that is risk-averse to some extent. In order to achieve the general policies, requirements, and goals, various approaches are put into consideration. These approaches are related to the operational and technical conditions, organization and management, analyses and some other factors which can probably affect the safety level in an organization ( Dwyer et al., 2016) . The method of calculating cost-benefit analysis in business is not trivial to implement since it needs a transformation of non-economic outcome such as expected loss of lives and damage to the environment. To evade the problem of transformation of all outcomes to a single unit, it is common in many instances to conduct a cost-benefit analysis ( Van et al., 2016) .
The costs to be incorporated in the CBA are supposed to be the nets costs to the duty holder of introducing the safety ( Zolnowski et al., 2017) . Those costs which tend to show the safety measure being assessed should be incorporated. These costs include the cost of operation, installation, training and other costs such as compensation payments which would result from suspending any service. On the other hand, the benefits to be incorporated in the CBA are the remunerations such as improved health and safety. This includes all the reduction in risks to workers, passengers and members of the public ( Del Fava et al., 2012) .
References
Coates IV, J. C. (2014). Cost-Benefit Analysis of Financial Regulation: Case Studies and Implications. Yale LJ , 124 , 882.
Del Fava, Emanuele, Claudio Ioriatti, and Alessia Melegaro. (2012). Cost-Benefit Analysis: Economic, Philosophical, and Legal Perspectives . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dwyer, Larry, Leo Jago, and Peter Forsyth. (2016). Economic evaluation of special events: Reconciling economic impact and cost-benefit analysis. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism .
Van der Zwaan, Bob, and Reyer Gerlagh. (2016). Offshore CCS and ocean acidification: a global long-term probabilistic cost-benefit analysis of climate change mitigation. Climatic Change.
Zolnowski, Andreas, Jürgen Anke, and Jan Gudat. (2017). Towards a Cost-Benefit-Analysis of Data Driven Business Models . Research Gate. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313792928_Presentation_to_paper_Towards_a_Cost-Benefit-Analysis_of_Data-Driven_Business_Models .
