How to Run an Effective Health and Safety Department on a Budget

Your company considers health and safety a core value. You’re committed to making safety part of everything you do, and you want a health and safety department that reflects that level of commitment.

Unfortunately, there’s just one problem: your small budget.

The good news is that your budget size doesn’t need to be a barrier to health and safety. In fact, it’s only a barrier insofar as you think it’s a barrier. You just have to get creative. Here’s how you can use a small budget to effectively build a health and safety department that serves you.

Assess Needs vs. Wants

When you have a small budget, you have to make the most of your resources. That does not mean cutting corners. Quite the opposite – if you want a truly good safety program, you can’t afford to cut corners.

Instead, it means that you have to strategically assess your needs versus your wants.

What your business needs to be safe is not the same thing as what you want. You might want to go ham on a two-day safety training, but when your business is small and pressed for productivity, there’s no need to do a long training when you can get the same benefit from a shorter training.

Similarly, there’s no reason to splurge on expensive safety equipment when cheaper equipment would do the job. That’s not to say you’re compromising on quality, but rather finding options of the same or similar quality that will serve your purposes just as well as pricier options.

Invest in Quality

On a related note, always be sure to invest in quality.

For small departments with equally small budgets, it’s tempting to stretch your dollar by reaching for cheap options, but you get what you pay for with safety. Just because a piece of equipment meets safety standards doesn’t mean it’s good at meeting them or that it will last as long as a better piece of equipment.

This is why we told you to assess your needs versus your wants. There’s no reason to splurge on wants when money is tight, but you should invest in quality for items that you need. This means assessing what you need the most and what equipment will make the best use of your resources.

When buying quality, it helps to buy in bulk. The good news about PPE items like steel-toed boots, gloves, and eye protection is that you can often purchase them in bulk orders.

The Tools to Help Your Health and Safety Department Succeed

The benefit of a small health and safety department is that you quite literally cannot afford to be careless. You have to make the best use of your resources under any circumstances, and that requires you to be smart about investing in tools that serve you.

We know the unique challenge facing small safety departments. Our safety software is designed to be the all-around tool your department needs to take a smarter approach to safety, no matter your resources. Sound like the right fit? Then get in touch today to find out how we can help your team thrive.