Aside from immediate health protection, PPE has multiple benefits for employers. While there is a cost to provide it and maintain compliance, employers have to remember that a single employee's serious injury can typically cost much more than the total cost of PPE for the workplace for a year. So accident avoidance is a key financial target to remember when evaluating PPE procurement.
The best cost reduction for workplace injury is prevention, and PPE is a key, tangible method by which that can happen. An injury that never happened is one that never generates any kind of cost, medical bills or higher workers compensation plan premiums. Prevention saves thousands and even millions of dollars for companies.
By reducing staff turnover due to injury absence, as well as protecting people at work, companies can enjoy greater productivity due to increased experience and performance by trained workers who know their jobs. Trained workers who have no down time from injuries often results in fewer mistakes on the job.
Downtime due to medical absence is a big loss in payroll. Injured and sick employees still have to be paid, and that means lost payroll costs with no productivity return. By reducing injuries and sickness with PPE, more payroll time is spent productively.
The big savings, of course, comes in avoiding lawsuits and legal costs from injured employees seeking recovery. Additionally, if there is a serious injury, there is sure to be a regulatory investigation into the matter which will likely trigger penalties for the company. Those can be painful to the accounting bottom line.