We’ve already shared the impact of unclean air within the manufacturing and engineering sectors on the health and wellbeing of individuals, as well as the safety impact it can have. But, there are also a number of additional benefits to a business of ensuring a clean working environment…
Recruitment and Retention
Ensuring sites and facilities benefit from the cleanest air will showcase to existing, and potential, employees that you’re demonstrating a very genuine duty of care to your workforce and that you’re committed to taking all steps necessary to look after their health and wellbeing.
Such actions can also provide organisations with a truly competitive edge – particularly when many are facing the squeeze financially and are perhaps having to look for alternative ways to attract (and retain) new blood and to differentiate themselves in a growing market.
Efficiencies
Equipment and machinery used across all manufacturing and engineering industries is expensive and a significant investment for any organisation – no matter its size. The continual breaking down of machinery has long been considered a natural consequence of the manufacturing processes due to the very nature of the tasks at hand – with, for example, pollution particles sticking to the inside of electrical cabinets. However, issues such as these can cause potentially huge damage through short-circuiting – resulting in the need for costly repairs, ongoing maintenance, and production downtime.
Superior air quality means that the machinery requires less cleaning and lower levels of maintenance, and can help ensure that machinery remains functioning effectively and that any breakdowns (and periods of downtime) are kept to a minimum.
Sustainability
Exhausting warm clean air back into the workplace can reduce energy costs, which has obvious benefits for a manufacturing business from a financial perspective. Operating more sustainably can also help an organisation demonstrate its overarching commitment to employees, stakeholders, and the wider community as well as its commitment to meeting regulatory requirements. Customers are increasingly looking to work with supply chain partners who are achieving sustainability targets through manufacturing responsibly, and so taking steps to ensure a clean and efficient work environment can help to differentiate yourselves from the competition – particularly those who are purely out to make the largest profits.
Productivity
Ill health can have a huge impact on productivity for a number of key reasons. An employee absent from the workplace means that the organisation has to either spread the workload amongst the existing team or look at employing additional support via external sources. Findings from a study by UK-based Nestle reported sickness-related absence as costing 2.5 times the salary costs of the individual employee, taking into account management time and the appointment of temporary workers.
Presenteeism, on the other hand, sees an employee continue to work whilst ill or injured, and subsequently, unable to operate at their full capacity. This has been shown to have a far greater impact on productivity than absenteeism. In fact, an Australian study has found that productivity losses through employees being ‘present’ can be up to four times as much as those causes by ‘absent’ workers.
Contact Filtermist to find out how we can help ensure the air in your workshop is clean and safe to breathe.