When we hear about people being killed in industrial accidents, it’s natural to feel sorry for the deceased - but their pain is over. Or we think about the paramedics - but they’re trained to deal with the worst.

But think about the supervisor. The one who witnesses the slip, the shocked expression, the fall, the carnage, the grinding, the scream, and then the silence. The one who rallies support, arranges contingencies and then… the one who has to make the call. Steeling their nerves with whichever intoxicant works for them, they get a phone number they hoped they would never need out of a file they hoped they would never need to open. They dial the digits and, after a brief delay while the network routes the call and zeroes in on the phone of the unfortunate recipient, it rings. And someone answers. And the supervisor says the words they don’t ever want to say to the person who doesn’t want to ever hear them: “I’m so sorry but… we’ve had pause production for a bit”.

A lost time accident is the worst kind of accident: the kind that affects shareholder value.