Non-safety costs: A novel methodology for an ex-ante evaluation

The costs related to occupational safety or, more precisely, non-safety aspects in the industry represent a moral and economic burden for individuals, employers and governments. Despite the importance of these costs, firms rarely recognize the real cost of non-safety and the opportunity to invest in improving their safety management system. The time and resources needed to collect appropriate, historical data for the evaluation of non-safety costs are indeed a problem for firms, most of all for small and medium enterprises. This paper develops a methodology for an ex-ante evaluation of non-safety costs, with a specific focus on SMEs, based on the collection of easily deducible data. In particular, the different cost items related to non-safety costs and the factors influencing them are identified. The cost functions for each cost item and, subsequently, the shapes of the cost functions are determined; this allows to cluster firms according to the shapes of functions of each cost item, as well as to understand which are the main occupational safety and health factors that distinguish different small and medium enterprises into peculiar groups. An example application of the methodology in a sample of Italian SMEs is proposed. The application paves the way to some remarks for policy and industrial decision-makers and advice for further research.