Financial Worries Create A Hazardous Workplace

Did you realize that the average North American worker spends about twenty hours per month worrying about finances? This statistic is concerning. That's, on average, an hour a day.

What happens when you're worrying about money? You are focused on your worries and not the task at hand. That means you are not fully present in the performance of your job; whether it be office work, driving, construction, serving your customers or attending a learning session. If you are preoccupied with your worries you are not fully aware of your surroundings. And when you're preoccupied, accidents happen.

In this still uncertain time in our economy, people are worried about finances. So much so, that they may be making decisions that could adversely affect their personal safety and security.

Here's a simple example of what happens when people start making their decisions based on a perceived lack of funds. Because money might be tight, an employee working in wintry conditions might choose to forgo purchasing winter tires this year and take a chance on the all-season radials despite the facts that all-seasons have no grip, no traction and no stopping power in temperatures below zero degrees Celsius. Add a young child in the back seat and, well, you get the picture.

There are some employees who actually have "win the lottery" as a financial strategy. I am dead serious. They believe that a windfall of money will solve all of their problems. Not true. If an employee has difficulty with the small amounts of money, they will never handle the big amounts of money. It's the reason why there are so many broke lottery winners just a year after their windfall. I will bet most of your employees are just not good with money.

So, here are five ideas to help employers get their employee's financial worries in check and get them focused back on the job:

1. Offer them the use of a financial planner. In fact, go ahead and work with a financial planning company to prepare a one-two hour session for the general staff. Then give them each an hour of work time over the next few days to meet privately with the financial planner to get started on a financial plan that will help remove some of the worry over the long-term.
2. Contract with a tire shop to provide your employees with a volume discount and offer your employees an hour or so off of work to go and get winter tires installed on their vehicles. People who feel secure driving to and from work will take that feeling of safety into the workplace.
3. Create a staff emergency fund with a maximum of whatever you feel comfortable with to help your staff with unforseen emergency funding. The emergency fund is a repayable loan over a short term. Most employees would never use it but to know that there is a safety net would reduce worry.
4. Offer to subsidize monthly passes to use public transit. Even $10 per employee helps a little but means a lot coming from their employer.
5. Create an inviting common area and encourage your people to bring their brown-bag lunches. Offer some lunchtime learning seminars around finances and budgeting and help your people acquire the skills to take control of their finances.

The Attitude of Money, Security and Safety is a necessary attitude in the workplace. Think beyond just safety. Help your people with their finances which helps the employee with developing a sense of security. Once a worker feels secure, he or she is less likely to take chances that would affect their personal safety.

The more you help your people get better with money, the less they will worry about it. What that means is that you could likely get another twenty hours per month productivity from your people by helping them with problems they don't like to talk about. Trust me on this: they will repay you with their loyalty.
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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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“Safety Attitude” Includes Money and Security

Safety Attitude is just like it reads: an Attitude of Safety. An Attitude of Safety transcends the workplace. An Attitude of Safety doesn’t only work between certain hours. That would be a Tolerance of Safety. Someone with a Tolerance of Safety might be heard saying, “I know the rules and I abide by them at work but after work I’m on my own time and you don’t own me after work. And so I get to choose how I act off the job, not you Mr. Employer.”

Safety, though, transcends personal injury potential. Safety is not just about whether people find a way to avoid being injured physically. It’s not just about finding fire exits in an emergency or wearing a hard hat on a construction site or owning safety gloves and glasses. But safety really is also about how people might avoid being injured - financially and emotionally too. The problem is that current Occupational Health and Safety programs don’t address Safety Attitude. OH&S programs really only address rules and procedures and adherence to those same rules and procedures. OH&S does not address the underlying attitudes that determine how the rules come about. A really successful Attitude of Safety program must include the elements of not just personal safety, but personal security and even money.

Here’s why. You go to work to earn money so that, over time, you can provide some security for your family like a financial nest-egg, life insurance, disability insurance, retirement planning and investments to help take the “living paycheck-to-paycheck” frustration away from your loved ones. When you develop your security strategy, you take the pressure off of your family. They are secure in knowing that if tough times befell you, they would be alright.

When you put together your security strategy, you are, in fact, looking for safety for your family. You have something precious to live for and that one precious thing, your family, is counting on you. When you have something to live for, like a good family life, you won’t take unnecessary risks on the job. You won’t do anything that would jeopardize you or your family’s welfare. When you are able look out for your family, then you are able to look out for your coworkers as well.

But if you won’t look out for your own personal safety and security, how in the world are you able to look for others? How you do one thing is how you do everything. Someone who is a menace to himself on the job is sure as hell going to be a menace to everyone he works with.

Face it, if you’ve got a good money plan in place and your family is well looked after should something tragic happen to you, you have security. Security, for most families, comes from doing the right things with your money.

The challenge for most people though, is that they don’t realize that they’re acting unsafely because they’re not on the job at the time. On payday, plunking a quarter of your paycheck down on the casino card-table or the VLT is not a Safety Attitude. Going to the bar to get liquored-up so that you can feel lousy and not be 100% the next morning is not a Safety Attitude. Driving home with a couple of beers under your belt is not a Safety Attitude. Getting a windfall of money and spending it all foolishly (boats, skidoos, etc) when you could invest it and set yourself up for life is not a Safety Attitude.

SAFETY ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: Being foolish with your money shows you don’t care about your long-term security or long-term safety. If you’re willing to take chances with your money, you’ll do the same thing on the job. You may adhere to safety regulations on the job but you really don’t much care for those rules. You simply tolerate them. Anyone who allows him or herself to be foolish with money, show up to work with a hangover, frequently misplace their requisite safety gear or even drive around without a seat belt on are the kinds of people who don’t care about their own personal safety and security. If they don’t care about their own safety and security, what makes you think that they’ll be looking out for the rest of their fellow crew members on the job? Get real.

If you want to increase safety in your workplace then increase security out of the workplace. Help people with their money and increase the security of their loved ones. Give people a reason to be careful and they will. Make them blindly adhere to a bunch of safety regulations and, well, you take your own chances on the success of that program.