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2. GET YOUR BUSINESS FIT RIGHT
Start by identifying the specific needs of your staff and business. Make sure any program you implement takes a broad approach to your business, allowing everything from pre-hire to fitness programs and more. It can help to imagine barriers to injury like slices of Swiss cheese. When holes align, an accident can occur. But stack up enough slices, and you can prevent incidents from happening. Examine workplace situations on an ongoing basis, so that you can make your business safer by plugging holes or adding new barriers.
Consider where the majority of injuries are occurring. Almost 80% of reported workplace injuries are musculoskeletal, caused by things like overuse, strain and muscle loading2. The most common reason for these is due to a manual handling associated incident3, so it can pay to make regular manual handling training the cornerstone of your injury prevention program.
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Then consider what additional training or support specific roles require; think stretching programs for drivers, or ergonomic assessments for more desk-bound workers.
Look at any existing programs and evaluate their effectiveness. These might include flu vaccinations, ergonomic assessments or bike-to-work initiatives. Those that are popular and/effective should be consolidated under a single banner to provide consistency and substance to your injury-proof program.
Accept that change may sometimes take time. As an example, construction giant Grocon took two years to achieve shifts in their injury prevention activity and workplace culture, but in that time they reduced MTIs and LTIs from 24 per month to just two, the average number of treatments per injury from 14.8 to six, and they saved a potential $478,281 in premium increases – changes that are worth persevering for.
[2] Key Work Health and Safety Statistics, Australia, 2014
[3] Bodycare 2014 www.bodycare.com.au
A risk assessment will help identify barriers to put in place and gaps that can be filled with ongoing training and education as part of your injury-proof program.
