Health and safety is a business issue for everyone, from remote-working accountants, to hybrid or jet-setting decision makers and workers on any shop or factory floor. Ensuring compliance with the health and safety of employees, teams and visitors can fall to senior accounting figures, who must be aware of all applicable rules.
Accounting for Health and Safety
While no environment is accident-proof, ensuring that the risks are minimised, and that workers follow the rules, know the best practices, and what to do in an emergency is all part of office life, be it remote, hybrid or in-person.
Accountants and other desk-based roles are not immune, especially when it comes to employee mental health and well-being, and the risks of desk jockey life. Creating a safe climate, and reducing the legal risks of costly incidents often falls to accounting roles within an office.
Neil Ormesher, CEO of Accounts and Legal, says, “Accountants should be on top of the latest rules that apply to any territory they operate or collaborate with. Not only does understanding and enforcing good health and safety practices improve attendance, reduce accidents and save on business insurance premiums, it makes for a better workplace with a higher reputation.”
What Has Health and Safety Got to Do With Accountants?
Accountants are noted for their eye for detail, and when it comes to health and safety they can be involved in a range of issues, including:
- Ergonomic hazards: from health issues around the processes of desk-intensive roles.
- The risks of trip hazards around an office (at home or in a professional setting).
- Meeting the compliance needs of local or industrial regulations.
- Protecting the reputation of a business from damage due to avoidable accidents.
As part of an accounting or wider senior role, you can identify, assess, and mitigate the financial risks related to health and safety, ensure compliance with the rules, and advise leadership on decisions to protect the company’s financial health. These can sound better coming from an accounts-facing role than from an operational role, where people are “always going on about health and safety.”
The Future of Health and Safety For All
Health and safety offers a moving set of targets for most businesses, especially as they evolve into hybrid operations and integrated partnering and thinking across departments.
Ensuring a high-quality setup at home to protect workers from RSI, back injuries (working on a laptop in bed is not a healthy way to work) and other issues plague accounting firms as much as other data-intensive roles. Laws will change, especially as new technology arrives or the longer-term health impact of home working becomes apparent.
The adaptation of technology means that people previously excluded from some technical roles can start in roles or rejoin the workforce. Consider AI-equipped laptops or AI tools that deliver improvements to software. One example is Job Access With Speech (JAWS) 2024/2025, a Microsoft Windows feature that can help accountants with sight issues work more effectively.
The latest versions allow users to ask questions about JAWS and other applications. Immediately providing information that the user needs without having to search through multiple documents or online content. Those and other less physically-abled workers will need office adjustments to help them get the safest and best experience.
And as similar diversity efforts become a benefit multiplier to many businesses, workers from diverse lives can bring more effective change to a business, bringing new ways of thinking, improving empathy within an organization and supporting a broader user or customer experience.
Summary
With all these changes, there will be the need to create or update policies, to look at the financial and tax implications of benefits in kind or new types of expenses, all of which make health and safety of great importance to accountants.
But, even at the simplest level, accountants will want to be comfortable wherever they are working, and with that critical work stretching to locations as diverse as airport lounges, on the train, coffee shops, home and a hot-desk or a comfortable office, there are a myriad of health and safety issues at every turn that keen accounting minds will want to consider and address, just in case the worst does happen.