Employee Wellness Newsletter : Workplace Health Promotion Program 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 working practices are three areas which may be coordinated together.
• Soft Tissue Sprains & Strains: This injury category continues to remain the number one financial loss for workers’ compensation. Many healthcare insurance dollars are also spent 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 Program Committee might consider contracting a fitness professional to come in and conduct stretching “refreshers” for employee groups throughout the year.
• Provide body mechanics training on an annual basis or more frequently if possible. These training sessions ought to 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 assist  in providing body mechanics training, job safety analysis, and other preventative services which can help workers work safer, smarter, and avert injury.
• Launch a safety problems suggestion box. Encourage workers to report safety and/or injury problems. Help senior staff to establish policy to recognize and reward workers who offer safety suggestions, offer tips, and solution ideas.
• A periodic presentation featuring a local medical provider addressing such topics as safe body mechanics, recovering from a back injury, appropriate spine care, etc.
• Partner with senior staff and supervisor teams to recognize and reward work groups who are efficacious with safety and injury prevention.
• The ergonomics of an employees’ workstation/work place design is valuable and applicable to every group.
• Offer ergonomic training opportunities to interested workers volunteers. These individuals can then help  other workers to evaluate their work areas for safety, comfort, and injury prevention.
• It is often more effective to have an observer evaluate staff members for helpful and friendly comfort suggestions rather than it is for individuals to evaluate themselves.
• One suggestion is to have staff members 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 prove how small adjustment changes can often make sizable comfort changes.
• Partner with the employer’s workers’ compensation carrier to help foster ergonomic policies and practices and to support employee training.