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What is heat costing you?

When heat slows your workforce, it slows your entire operation. SafeGuard® helps you catch early signs of heat stress so teams stay safer and more productive and slowdowns don’t sneak up on you. Here’s why more leaders are treating heat stress tracking as a strategic investment.
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The Costs of Heat Stress Add Up

From both a global perspective and for an individual company, heat-related incidents, worker hospitalization, and noncompliance violations can eat into productivity and profits.
The average cost of SafeGuard is $25 per person, per month, or as low as $15/month for large teams — a cost that pays for itself if it prevents just 1 heat-related incident.

Investing in Heat Stress Prevention: From Risk to Return

Using SafeGuard’s wearable heat stress solution can protect your team and strengthen your bottom line at the same time.

The Hidden Costs of Heat

While the costs directly linked to heat are high, they represent only a partial picture of the full financial impact of heat stress on companies and their workforces. Heat is often a contributing factor in workplace injuries but is drastically under-reported as such — meaning that heat-related injuries tend to be logged as “cardiac arrest,” “renal failure,” or “slips/falls.”

Based on a comprehensive model of heat’s impact across 14 categories, the average heat-related cost per employee is $40,000 to $80,000.

These costs include loss in productivity due to high-heat conditions, insurance increases, turnover and rehiring costs, OSHA noncompliance fines, and more.

Additionally, single, preventable, heat-related incidents can compound the financial strain of heat-related operational losses. On average, the per-incident cost of workers’ comp, direct medical, OSHA violation, and litigation/settlement pools is $200,000.

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What Can SafeGuard Save Your Company?

When heat becomes a risk, SafeGuard gives your team a real-time edge. These examples show how fast the platform can deliver ROI for any size operation.

Small Roofing Company

Valiant Paving and Roofing is a highly respected commercial roofing and paving company. Their 15-person crew regularly works in high-heat environments where regulating core body temperature is a challenge. Last year alone, Valiant saw six workers leave. A few months later, new reviews on Glassdoor cited gaps in safety solutions as a key concern at Valiant.

Upon implementing SafeGuard, Valiant stood to save $68,000 in heat-related incident costs through real-time tracking.

The impact of SafeGuard was felt beyond the hard financials. The system helped prevent 1 worker hospitalization the following year, and resulted in 25% less turnover due to increased employee satisfaction and company morale.

SafeGuard Cost
employees
15
annually
$ 4500
Annual Heat-Related Incident Costs

$45,000

Includes the following estimated costs:

  • Ambulance transport: $1,200–$2,500
  • ER evaluation and treatment: $8,000–$15,000
  • Hospital observation (1–2 days): $15,000–$25,000

Direct Costs from Medical

$3,000

Assumptions:

  • 15-worker crew
  • 20 workdays per season affected by extreme heat
  • Average fully loaded labor cost (conservative estimate): $35/hour

 

Recovered productivity assumes a conservative 3.5% improvement during extreme-heat days.

  • Daily labor cost: 15 crew members × $35/hour payrate × 8 hours in workday = $4,200/day
  • $4,200 × 20 extreme-heat workdays = $84,000
  • $84,000 × 3.5% in recovered productivity through SafeGuard = $2,940, rounded to $3,000

Productivity Costs

$20,000

Turnover costs include recruiting, onboarding, and lost ramp-up time. Research shows that workers who perceive their employer prioritizes safety report higher engagement and satisfaction, and Glassdoor data indicate that satisfied employees are less likely to apply for other jobs. Our model conservatively assumes SafeGuard helps retain one additional worker per year by improving safety culture and reducing fatigue.

Assumptions:

  • Workforce: 15
  • Conservative annual turnover tied to safety and working conditions: ~1 worker
  • Replacement cost per skilled construction worker: $20,000 including recruiting, onboarding, training, lost productivity, and supervisor time

Turnover Costs

The SafeGuard Impact
minor alerts sent and managed
17
moderate heat-related medical event prevented
1
lower employee turnover due to company safety improvements, including implementing SafeGuard
25 %

Midsize General Contractor

Zenith Construction Group is a mid-size General Contractor with 350 field employees operating across multiple sites, from steel framing in Texas to roofing in Florida. Their safety record is strong, but like all contractors, they struggle with peak summer productivity.

By purchasing SafeGuard for their workforce of 350 crew members, companies like Zenith Construction could save over $1 million annually in heat-related incident costs.

SafeGuard more than paid for itself in the 83 minor alerts issued to workers, helping prevent heat stress — and resulting injuries — from happening in the first place.

SafeGuard Cost
employees
350
annually
$ 105000
Annual Heat-Related Incident Costs

$135,000

Savings assume the following research-backed inputs:

  • 3 heat-related hospitalizations prevented
  • Average cost per heat hospitalization: $45,000, representing a severe heat illness requiring ER care, possible ICU observation, diagnostics, and short inpatient stay, but not a fatality or long-term disability claim.
  • 3 hospitalizations × $45,000 = $135,000

Direct Costs from Medical

$750,000

Assumptions:

  • Workforce of 350 field employees
  • 60 workdays per year affected by extreme heat
  • Peak heat impact: ~1 hour/day of lost productive output
  • Average fully burdened labor cost (conservative estimate): $60/hour

Recovered productivity assumes a conservative 60% of realistically recoverable exposure through monitoring, pacing, early alerts, and supervisor intervention:

  • Daily labor cost: 350 field employees × $60/hour pay rate × 1 hour/day = $21,000/day
  • $21,000 × 60 extreme-heat workdays = $1,260,000 gross exposure
  • $1,260,000 × 60% in recovered productivity through SafeGuard = $756,000, rounded to $750,000

Productivity Costs

$150,000

Turnover costs include recruiting, onboarding, and lost ramp-up time. Research shows that workers who perceive their employer prioritizes safety report higher engagement and satisfaction, and Glassdoor data indicate that satisfied employees are less likely to apply for other jobs. Our model conservatively assumes SafeGuard helps retain one additional worker per year by improving safety culture and reducing fatigue.

 

Assumptions:

  • Workforce: 350
  • Conservative annual turnover tied to safety and working conditions: ~2 workers
  • Replacement cost per skilled construction worker: $75,000 including recruiting, onboarding, training, lost productivity, and supervisor time
  • 2 workers × $75,000 = $150,000

Turnover Costs

The SafeGuard Impact

83

minor alerts sent and managed

3

hospitalizations prevented

2

We based our analysis of schedule creep based on the following assumptions:

  • 10% average heat-related productivity drag across the peak summer period (a conservative estimate)
  • 30% in recovered productivity drag through SafeGuard-enabled interventions (alerts, pacing, breaks, hydration prompts, and reassignments)
  • 10% × 30% = 3% of total peak-heat labor capacity

 

How we calculated our schedule creep estimate:

  • Recovered hours: 168,000 (hours of full workforce) × 3% = 5,040 hours
  • Scheduled days avoided (crew equivalent):
    • Daily capacity of the full workforce = 350 × 8 = 2,800 hours/day
    • Schedule creep avoided = 5,040 ÷ 2,800 = 1.8 days

days of schedule creep avoided during peak heat months

Enterprise Energy Company

Star Energy Corp. is a Fortune 500 company with 5,000 field employees working in high-hazard environments, including power plant maintenance, pipeline construction, and utility line repair across diverse climates.

Companies like Star can implement SafeGuard company-wide to centralize heat stress management through real-time monitoring and data-driven compliance. In this case, SafeGuard was deployed to help the organization’s safety teams effectively support the health and wellness of individual utility line workers.

By investing $250,000 annually in the SafeGuard platform, a company with 5,000 employees could generate an annual net profit of up to $1.6 million.

SafeGuard Cost
employees
5000
annually
$ 250002
Annual Heat-Related Incident Costs

$340,000

Savings assume the following research-backed inputs:

 

  • 1 severe heat illness (heat stroke or exertional collapse requiring ICU): $180,000
    • Includes emergency response, ICU, and in-patient care, extended wage replacement, claims administration, and reserve
  • 4 moderate heat events: $40,000 per incident × 4 events = $160,000
    • Includes ER visit, treatment, and short recovery time

Direct Costs from Medical

$1.2M

Assumptions:

  • Workforce of 5,000 field employees
  • 10 workdays per year affected by extreme heat
  • Average fully burdened labor cost (conservative estimate): $60/hour

 

Recovered productivity assumes a conservative 5% of productivity loss from heat-related drag (far below the 29–41% loss cited in several heat-related studies):

  • Daily labor cost: 5,000 field employees × $60/hour pay rate × 8 hours/day = $2,400,000/day
  • $2,400,000/day × 5% in recovered productivity through SafeGuard = $120,000
  • $120,000 × 10 high-impact days = $1,200,000

Productivity Costs

$300,000

Turnover costs include recruiting, onboarding, and lost ramp-up time. Research shows that workers who perceive their employer prioritizes safety report higher engagement and satisfaction, and Glassdoor data indicate that satisfied employees are less likely to apply for other jobs. Our model conservatively assumes SafeGuard helps retain one additional worker per year by improving safety culture and reducing fatigue.

 

Assumptions:

  • Workforce: 5,000
  • Conservative annual turnover, assuming heat stress contributes to 0.2% incremental attritions: 10 workers
  • Replacement cost per skilled construction worker: $30,000 including recruiting, onboarding, training, and lost ramp-up productivity
  • 10 workers × $30,000 = $300,000

Turnover Costs

The SafeGuard Impact
minor alerts sent and managed
1125
hospitalizations prevented
5
negligence-based lawsuit or wrongful death settlement ($2.5M payout) avoided
1

What You Don’t Know Can Cost You

As annual average temperatures continue to rise, the impact of heat on your workforce can’t be overstated. Learn how stress impacts worker physiology and performance.
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Stop reacting to heat risk. Request your custom estimate to discover how SafeGuard prevents heat-related incidents and generates a recurring profit center for your business.

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DISCLAIMERS AND REFERENCES

*Many worker injuries are indirectly caused by heat stress. 

References