Thorough business expense planning and budgeting is one of the best ways to protect your business. Not only are you keeping it safe from out-of-control expenses, but it’s a great opportunity to assess your business’s needs and plan out what investments will help your business grow. However, some forms of budgeting provide more protection and growth than others. For example, traditional budgeting only makes room for what your organization purchased the year before, whereas capital budgeting paves the way for equipment and large purchases that may not have had a line-item allocation in prior years. As you’re scoping out your prospective spending for 2025, make room in your budget for fall protection equipment. In this guide, we’ll explore how these investments can reduce spending in other categories (immediately and over time) and walk through some different forms of fall protection equipment that offer a lot of business value.
The Big Expenses of Insufficient Fall Protection Equipment
Before you can start establishing the annual budget for safety protection projects, it’s important to consider the costs of inaction or to maintain the status quo. When your company doesn’t actively budget for fall protection and better safety programs, expect high costs in these categories:
Insurance
Every company needs insurance, and you’ll need coverage for the building, particular equipment, injuries, products, and so on. But your insurance providers don’t just base your premiums on the type of coverage you need. They also consider how big of a risk your business is. If you have a history of accidents and claims, this can drastically increase your costs. Conversely, investing in fall protection and making your property safe can reduce your premiums. You can even reach out to your provider to discuss what new changes or installations will have the most significant effect on the costs.
Workers Compensation Claims
When your workers are injured, your company must pay medical costs and payout to the employees during their recovery. There are direct costs, such as the money itself. However, indirect costs include insurance increases, administrative burdens, and processing costs.
Failure to respond to a claim properly or not having the right insurance could even lead to legal claims and court costs. These costs are highly variable and can grow quickly.
Penalties
When your facility is not OSHA-compliant, it will fail audits, incur penalties for each specific incident of non-compliance, and slow down productivity due to increased inspection and audit obligations.
Mitigate These Risks with Fall Protection Equipment
The best way to control those costs listed above is with new equipment, resources, and training protocols that make your organization less likely to incur violations or have injury incidents. By implementing the right fall protection solutions, your facility becomes much safer. While every building is different, these tools and installations can increase on-site OSHA and CCOHS compliance, as well as compliance with local laws, and make your facility less of a liability:
> Dock Gates – Loading dock doors frequently sit open in warehouses, even if they shouldn’t. Because warehouses can sometimes have poor ventilation and temperature control, hardworking staff will draw open the overhead doors to get a breeze and improve airflow. But this leaves an unprotected edge with a sudden drop of four feet or even higher.
Instead of trying to constantly police this, your facility could compromise and install loading dock gates. These barriers visually alert workers that danger is nearby and physically obstruct the edge, so people are less likely to accidentally fall through the opening.
> Industrial Safety Gates – In addition to dock gates, Swing safety gate products solve an important problem in fall protection solutions: There needs to be a solid perimeter so workers can’t fall from an elevated height. But areas like staircases, hatches, and ladders are walkways—workers must have access that penetrates the barrier.
That’s where a swing safety gate comes in. These types of industrial safety gates allow people exiting the top of stairs or a ladder to simply push the gate open, but they require workers moving toward the drop or edge to pull the gate open. This stops people from leaning against the gate or tripping through it. Self-closing industrial safety gates also have a default closed position so the perimeter is maintained at all times when the gate isn’t actively being used.
> Machine Guarding Solutions – Your facility likely has oversized equipment that requires regular inspections and repairs. This can include giant rooftop HVAC units that repair technicians require access to or machinery located on a shop floor that requires maintenance and cleaning. Machine guarding installations are barrier around these pieces of equipment that:
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- Staff can safely use as handholds and guardrails for navigation
- Staff can affix safety harnesses to them, provided they’re rated as lifeline anchors
- Continuously obstruct accidental access to potential dangers
Installing solutions like these makes your facility safer, reduces other costs, and keeps you compliant with safety regulations.
Benefits of Planning Your Budget to Include Industrial Safety Gates and Other Fall Protection Equipment
When you’re planning a budget, you must weigh different priorities, competing obligations, and the rate of return for big-ticket improvements. Consider these benefits of making 2025 the year you add more fall protection purchases to your budget.
One-Time Purchases for Immediate and Long-Term Savings
Once the equipment is installed, you see immediate benefits: you close compliance gaps, you can reduce applicable premium costs, and you eliminate key risks of severe injury incidents. But you also see savings over time: fewer legal costs, fewer claims, and fewer OSHA penalties in future audits.
Keep Variable Costs Low
The headache of many of the costs and penalties we’ve discussed isn’t just that they’re big expenses that don’t help your business. They’re also often unpredictable—you can’t know exactly when an accident or lawsuit will happen. This is massively disruptive when it comes to cash flow and operational continuity, which makes the costs even more dangerous.
Close Gaps in OSHA Compliance
Making your facility OSHA-compliant needs to be a business priority on all fronts. OSHA violations are expensive, and they put your employees in the way of preventable harm. They can also give your business the reputation of being a bad employer, unreliable, and uncommitted to professional obligations. But eliminating those gaps with swing safety gate solutions and other indoor fall protection equipment gives you a reputation of reliability, safety, and quality.
Handle Expenses During the Typical Budget and Procurement Cycles—Not Off-Cycle Emergencies
At the end of the day, not having the required barriers, guardrails, and safety gates is not an option; it’s not a matter of whether you need to buy them, but a matter of when. Putting them in your budgetary plan means you can compare different vendors, negotiate on price, and allocate funds without disrupting the projects. You can also purchase and install or implement them more systematically.
Plan Your Safety Equipment Budget with Fabenco
As you plan your 2025 budget, start with a detailed safety audit. Zeroing in on the gaps in your facility’s safety programs and prioritizing different equipment purchases protects your business and makes managing finances clearer. Then, reach out to Fabenco to request pricing details for the fall protection equipment that will address those needs. Our team is here to help you complete your budget and procurement processes, so you start and end the year safer.
