Is There a Solution to Workplace Injuries?
In 2005, there were 246,300 Non-Fatal Occupational injures or illness with lost work days in Florida. According to the Occupational Safety & Health Statistics Program at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) 13% of all injuries occur within 90 Days of employment. 23% occur within 4 hours of arriving at work. The solution to eliminate workplace injuries start when a proactive Injury Prevention Program is implemented.
A winning Injury Prevention Program start with good hiring startegies - not hiring the first “Warm Body” that shows up at your company. Good hiring startegies include selecting the right candidate, ensuring that they work safely and guiding them through appropriate training to become productive members of your team.
Most employers do not evaluate their hiring and retention policies to determine if these policies are contributing to the volume of injuries that occur within their organization.
There are 4 Critical Steps that should be implemented to create an effective Injury Prevention Program:
Evaluate the root cause of accidents in your organization - Do you know why accidents are happening?
Evaluate the job description to ensure that it coorelates to teh actual job demands - Do you know what you are asking your employees to do on a daily basis?
Identify injury prone areas and develop solutions to eliminate the exposure - When injuries occur at your company - do you go back to business as usual the next day or do you try to find out why the accident happend and make immediate corrections to prevent it from happening again?
The ability to Cohesively blend production requirements, job demands, safety awareness and injury prevention. Do you train your employees or do you just tell them what to do?
If you think, there are no problems at you job site, great - but if you had even one injury this year you have a problem.
9 out of 10 employers are too busy reaction to their current injuries to take the time to sucessfully navigate the Florida Workers’ Compensation System - for that matter any Workers’ Comp System.
Are you prepared to effectively manage injures or are your injured employees managing you?
Stay tuned for the answer to this question.
Margaret Spence President WorkCompSeminars.com and Douglas Claims & Risk Consultants, Inc
