You think your company is safe from operational safety failures? Think again.
Businesses that scale too fast without their safety systems keeping pace are significantly more likely to experience serious injuries. And when negligence is determined under comparative negligence law, those injuries come with heavy consequences.
Here’s why rushing growth puts your company at risk.
What you’ll uncover:
- Why Rapid Growth Creates Safety Vulnerabilities
- How Comparative Negligence Law Determines Fault
- Common Operational Failures In Scaling Companies
- Best Practices For Closing Safety Protocol Gaps
Why Rapid Growth Creates Safety Vulnerabilities
Operations and safety programs are not built for speed. That’s why rapidly scaling companies routinely experience a spike in worker injuries and safety failures.
Employees come on board without proper training. Equipment is run down and worn. Safety policies are neglected to make room for production quotas.
Businesses that grow too quickly simply can’t scale safety at the same rate. And that makes workplace injuries far more common.
Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, private industry employers suffered through 2.5 million nonfatal injuries and illnesses in the United States alone in 2024.
OSHA’s Top 10 Most-Cited Violations for Fiscal Year 2024 proves growth-related safety violations are even worse in certain industries. For example, fall protection violations have been leading the chart for 14 years with over 6,300 violations in FY 2024.
Imagine a company on fire growing at 200% year over year. You’d call it dangerous right?
As a company grows, its infrastructure for safety should too. Yet for businesses that prioritize scaling over safety systems, a workplace accident injury becomes far more likely.
How Comparative Negligence Law Determines Fault
If you haven’t heard about comparative negligence law until now, you might be surprised by how it works.
Essentially, comparative negligence allows fault to be shared between multiple parties after an accident. In other words, both the employer and employee can be found negligent.
Modified comparative negligence is the more common version used by the majority of states. Under this system, the injured employee cannot collect damages if they are found to be more than 50% at fault. However, a few states use a 51% rule.
Under pure comparative negligence laws, the employee can still collect 1% in damages if they are found to be 99% at fault.
Comparative negligence matters because when your safety systems haven’t kept up with growth, it’s hard to argue that an employee was more negligent than your company.
If employee training is lacking, equipment is damaged, or safety protocols are ignored… You’re going to be found at fault when an injury occurs.
Common Operational Failures In Growing Companies
Okay, but where do these operational safety gaps specifically come from?
Here are the leading causes of safety system failures when companies scale too fast.
Safety Training
Did that new hire receive proper safety training? If your company is growing too fast chances are the answer is no.
Safety training doesn’t just happen during employee onboarding. Both workers and management should be undergoing regular training to identify and prevent hazards.
But once again… too many companies prioritize growth over safety. Skipping training to onboard a new employee faster is like handing them a time bomb.
Equipment operators who aren’t trained or refreshed annually create a huge safety gap. Always err on the side of caution and train as many employees as possible.
Outdated Safety Policies
Those safety policies you put in place when you were in 1 office with 4 employees don’t scale. Operating procedures, maintenance schedules, and equipment need to be assessed and updated regularly.
Growth will inevitably bring new hazards. Safety policies that aren’t updated to reflect your company’s current state leave gaping holes in your safety system.
When was the last time you audited your safety procedures?
Equipment Problems
Want to know a leading cause of worker injury?
Equipment that needs maintenance. Or worse… broken equipment that management knows should be replaced but “have been holding off because of the cost.”
It doesn’t take an OSHA inspection to know that using equipment longer than it’s intended is negligent. Keep your equipment up-to-date and handle maintenance as part of your regular schedule.
Lack Of Supervision
Another massive issue during rapid growth? Managers get spread thin too.
When your team grows and you fail to add management in proper proportion, someone isn’t going to catch that workers aren’t following proper procedures or speaking up about hazards.
Even the most diligent worker tends to become lazy about safety when nobody is watching. Ensure enough managers are on the floor to keep every worker in check.
Improper Hazard Communication
If you want to see one of OSHA’s deadliest violations year after year, look no further than hazard communication.
Absent or improper labeling of chemicals. Failure to train employees on potential hazards. These tend to come up whenever growth is outpacing safety protocols.
Closing Safety Protocol Gaps Before An Incident Occurs
All the above failures can be fixed. But they won’t be fixed unless you make it priority. Put your company on the path to catching these safety gaps before they cause serious injuries by following these tips.
- Audit your safety policies. Update whatever is outdated and eliminate loopholes. Hire a safety professional if your business has grown beyond one person supervising production.
- Provide consistent safety training to everyone. Going back to the example of the worker injured by a piece of equipment they hadn’t been trained on… train everyone. Every single employee. Regularly.
- Maintenance schedules are your friend. Actually following them is golden.
- Document everything so if an incident does occur, you’re able to prove negligence didn’t come from your company’s side.
Businesses across America spend over $1 billion each week on direct workers’ compensation costs for injuries that could’ve been prevented. Spend a fraction of that on prevention and save your business thousands.
Pulling It All Together
Employee safety should NEVER be compromised in the name of growth. But too many companies get so caught up in scaling that they forget about procedures that were put in place for a reason.
If your company is growing too fast for safety protocols to keep up, it’s only a matter of time before you’re faced with high costs of worker injury.
Rather than waiting for that incident to happen, take steps to close your safety gaps as soon as possible.
Audit your safety protocols, train your team, and instill a culture where worker safety is priority number one.
Training is done. Thank your lucky stars nobody got hurt because of your negligence.
