Employee Wellness Ideas: Safety and Wellness
Other departments within a business will likely focus on related areas of employee safety and injury prevention. Wellness activities are a natural partner to many other human resource, employee motivation, and safety programs. Body mechanics, ergonomics, and safe on the job practices are three areas which may be coordinated together.
• Soft Tissue Sprains & Strains: This injury category continues to remain the number one monetary loss for workers’ compensation. Many medical insurance dollars are also invested on back pain, other sprains, and strains. Wellness and safety efforts can focus on:
• Warm up stretches before starting work or periodic stretching during work. These can do much to prevent soft tissue injury. Provide training to work groups so they may begin a stretching program. These groups can then continue on their own.
• The Employee Wellness Committee might consider contracting a fitness professional to come in and conduct stretching “refreshers” for employee groups throughout the year.
• Offer body mechanics training on an annual basis or more frequently if possible. These training sessions should focus on work related tasks and safety, as well as feature a segment on home tasks and body safety.
• Partner with your employer’s workers’ compensation carrier to support in providing body mechanics training, job safety analysis, and other preventative services which can help employees work safer, smarter, and avert injury.
• Start a safety concerns suggestion box. Urge employees to report safety and/or injury concerns. Help management to establish policy to recognize and reward employees who offer safety suggestions, support tips, and solution ideas.
• A periodic presentation featuring a local medical provider discussing such topics as safe body mechanics, recovering from a back injury, appropriate spine care, etc.
• Partner with management and supervisor teams to recognize and reward work groups who are successful with safety and injury prevention.
• The ergonomics of an employees’ workstation/work place design is significant and applicable to every group.
• Offer ergonomic training opportunities to interested employees volunteers. These people can then support other employees to evaluate their work areas for safety, comfort, and injury prevention.
• It is frequently more effective to have an observer evaluate employees for helpful and friendly comfort suggestions instead of it is for people to evaluate themselves.
• One suggestion is to have employees remind one another about correct posture, to take breaks, to stop and do quick mini stretches, etc.
• Take before and after photos of work areas as changes are made. This will help to corroborate how small adjustment changes can frequently make sizable comfort changes.
• Partner with the employer’s workers’ compensation carrier to help cultivate ergonomic policies and practices and to support employee training.
