Proactive product safety planning: reducing risk, protecting your brand, and lowering costs

Product-related injuries can undermine consumer trust, disrupt sales, and impede long-term business growth. Planning for product safety throughout the product design and launch process benefits consumers, companies, and their business partners alike.

Investing in product safety supports other product, brand, and business plan investments. The fallout from a product injury or defect hurts not only the profitability of that specific product, but can also reach entire product lines or brands.

Additionally, in the current litigation environment, companies that mishandle product safety may face legal actions extending beyond traditional product liability, including claims based on negligent undertaking. Companies can also find themselves facing punitive damages when documents reflect an institutional disregard for consumer safety. Issues like a significant delay in regulatory reporting or a documented hyperfocus on consumer misuse rather than evaluation of the product can amplify existing litigation risk.

Whether companies are working with outside counsel and consulting teams to launch a new product or assessing an incident response for a product already in the market, this article identifies five suggestions that can improve product safety processes, leading to better outcomes for  the company and the customer.

Learn more on Sedgwick's Recall Index