What Keeps Small Business Owners up? Their Worst Workplace Nightmares

What workplace frights keep small business owners up at night?

It may sound like part of a Halloween ditty, but it’s at the heart of a series of questions the people at Pie Insurance thought would be a good to ask as we near spookiest night of the year.

Small businesses say slips and falls, death, fire, a dangerous person and auto accidents are their biggest fears.

Related: Survey Shows a Worker Safety Gap Between Business Owner Generations

A survey from Pie Insurance conducted with more than 1,000 small businesses identified a nightmare list that might make business owners lose sleep at night. And some of the fears they listed are well founded.

Slips and falls was one of the leading causes of workplace incidents, according to the National Safety Council, accounting for 30% of non-fatal injuries. Slips and falls were also the leading cause of fatal accidents in the workplace.

Related: The Key Role of Workplace Safety Education in Small Business Insurance

Any workplace accidents that lead to death were an all-to-real nightmare shared by may of the small businesses surveyed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 5,190 fatal workplace incidents in 2022.

Fire was another well-founded concern echoed in the survey. Roughly 100,000 fires occur every year in commercial areas.

Workplace violence and auto-accidents also topped the list of worries.

One uplifting trend is that workplace hazards have been somewhat mitigated by the migration to work-from-home and hybrid-work following the pandemic.

“It helps to mitigate some of those risks, but in other cases, there’s much less visibility by employers to really know what type of safety practices are being practiced by their employees when they’re working remotely,” said Carla Woodard, senior vice president of claims for Pie Insurance.

Woodard said this may be a reason the frequencies of workplace injuries has come down over the years in general industries.

One workplace safety fear that is on more radars nowadays, but still needs more exposure, is mental wellness, according to Woodard.

“That is not talked about enough, I would say. You know, we’re getting a little bit more awareness around mental health, and some of what we would consider mental health, illnesses and injuries that may occur as a result of workplace situations,” she said. “So while it’s starting to get a bit more traction and awareness, it is something that I think in the future, we’re going to start seeing more information about.”

Pie Insurance commissioned Yougov PLC to conduct the survey. Total sample size was 1,034 U.S. small business owners, as defined as companies with one to 500 employees.

Colonno Selestino is an intern for Claims Journal. He’s a senior at Cal State University Long Beach and expects to graduate with a B.A. in journalism in 2025. He also works at the Long Beach Current, CSULB’s student newspaper.