--- title: "Ensuring Health and Safety in Your Business: It’s Your Ass on the Line" description: workplace health and safety small business owners inspection software minimized risk --- [![the-checker-grey-300](https://www.thechecker.net/hubfs/the-checker-grey-300.png) ](https://www.thechecker.net/) [ Login ](https://store.thechecker.net/login.php) [ GET A DEMO ](https://www.thechecker.net/demo) 2 min read ## [Ensuring Health and Safety in Your Business: It’s Your Ass on the Line](https://www.thechecker.net/stories/blog/ensuring-health-and-safety-in-your-business-its-your-ass-on-the-line) by [Shawn Macpherson](https://www.thechecker.net/stories/blog/author/shawn-macpherson) ![donkey-fence-risk-safety-the-checker.jpg](https://www.thechecker.net/hs-fs/hubfs/images/donkey-fence-risk-safety-the-checker.jpg?width=600&height=350&name=donkey-fence-risk-safety-the-checker.jpg) When you’re the owner of a small to medium-sized business (SMB), workplace health and safety is extremely personal. Even if your SMB is incorporated, a work-related fatality, serious injury, or major illness due to negligence can: - jeopardize the business’s finances due to regulatory fines, liability judgement, higher insurance costs, and operational disruptions - expose you (not just the business) to civil lawsuits lead to criminal charges against you if laws were broken - fill you with personal guilt for not protecting the people hurt. And even without an accident or health issue, non-compliance with relevant regulations can result in fines that are hard for an SMB and its owners to absorb. With so much on the line (your business, your personal finances, your employees’ well-being), it’s easy to see why workplace risk is a constant worry of so many SMB owners. If you’re not worried, you should be. But worry doesn’t have to mean losing sleep if you turn that worry into a proactive approach to workplace health and safety. Worry is good if it leads to positive action. It’s only bad when it festers and you do nothing to address its causes. Without in any way discounting the suffering that lax workplace health and safety programs can cause for your personnel, if you own an SMB, ensuring health and safety is a matter of preventing your own suffering. There are many elements to a solid health and safety program, such as training of new personnel, recurring re-training, incentives to work safely, and consequences for being unsafe. However, no measures will be adequate without regular inspections of facilities, work-sites, and equipment. Even if your personnel are doing everything right, a failure to detect a problem that could have been discovered with an inspection can lead to a disastrous problem. That’s why we strongly recommend a formalized, strongly enforced inspection program to ease the worry about what could go wrong. Taking inspections very seriously leads to peace of mind. For example, using The Checker inspection checklist books or The Checker Software, you can be assured that everything that should be inspected is being thoroughly and properly inspected when it should be—and that’s comforting knowledge to have. Your business’s future is at stake. Don’t gamble with it. Use all the resources available to prevent a health and safety issue from dealing you a losing hand. **Takeaway** The pressure to ensure workplace health and safety is particularly intense for SMB owners, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Utilizing tools such as The Checker, owners can rest easy knowing they’ve minimized the risk of a catastrophic accident or employee health incident. Tags: [inspection software](https://www.thechecker.net/stories/blog/topic/inspection-software), [risk assessments](https://www.thechecker.net/stories/blog/topic/risk-assessments) - [** ](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://www.thechecker.net/stories/blog/ensuring-health-and-safety-in-your-business-its-your-ass-on-the-line&title=Ensuring%20Health%20and%20Safety%20in%20Your%20Business:%20It’s%20Your%20Ass%20on%20the%20Line&picture=&description=workplace%20health%20and%20safety%20small%20business%20owners%20inspection%20software%20minimized%20risk) - [**](https://twitter.com/share?source=https://www.thechecker.net/stories/blog/ensuring-health-and-safety-in-your-business-its-your-ass-on-the-line&text=Ensuring%20Health%20and%20Safety%20in%20Your%20Business:%20It’s%20Your%20Ass%20on%20the%20Line%20-%20https://www.thechecker.net/stories/blog/ensuring-health-and-safety-in-your-business-its-your-ass-on-the-line) - [**](http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://www.thechecker.net/stories/blog/ensuring-health-and-safety-in-your-business-its-your-ass-on-the-line&title=Ensuring%20Health%20and%20Safety%20in%20Your%20Business:%20It’s%20Your%20Ass%20on%20the%20Line&summary=workplace%20health%20and%20safety%20small%20business%20owners%20inspection%20software%20minimized%20risk) ## Related Articles ## [Why DIY Inspection Tools Fall Short](https://www.thechecker.net/stories/blog/why-diy-inspection-tools-fall-short) 3 min read Topics: [checklist design](https://www.thechecker.net/stories/blog/topic/checklist-design), [inspection software](https://www.thechecker.net/stories/blog/topic/inspection-software), [equipment maintenance](https://www.thechecker.net/stories/blog/topic/equipment-maintenance) ## [When a Crane Fails: A Costly Reminder to Inspect](https://www.thechecker.net/stories/blog/when-a-crane-fails-a-costly-reminder-to-inspect) 2 min read Topics: [inspection software](https://www.thechecker.net/stories/blog/topic/inspection-software), [equipment safety](https://www.thechecker.net/stories/blog/topic/equipment-safety) ## [Strengthening Risk Management with Inspection Software](https://www.thechecker.net/stories/blog/strengthening-risk-management-with-inspection-software) 2 min read Topics: [risk assessments](https://www.thechecker.net/stories/blog/topic/risk-assessments), [audit software](https://www.thechecker.net/stories/blog/topic/audit-software) ## FREE eBOOK WHY INSPECT? 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