Employee Wellness : 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 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 financial loss for workers’ compensation. Many health insurance dollars are also spent on back pain, other sprains, and strains. Wellness and safety efforts can focus on:
• Warm up stretches before beginning work or periodic stretching during work. These can do much to prevent soft tissue injury. Give training to work groups so they may start 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.
• Offer body mechanics training on an yearly basis or more frequently if possible. These training sessions must 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 staff members work safer, smarter, and avoid injury.
• Implement a safety issues suggestion box. Encourage employees to report safety and/or injury issues. Help upper management to establish policy to recognize and reward employees who offer safety recommendations, provide tips, and solution ideas.
• A periodic presentation featuring a local medical provider addressing such issues as safe body mechanics, recovering from a back injury, appropriate spine care, etc.
• Partner with upper management and supervisor teams to recognize and reward work groups who are thriving with safety and injury prevention.
• The ergonomics of an employees’ workstation/work place design is important and applicable to every group.
• Offer ergonomic training opportunities to interested workers volunteers. These people can then support  other workers to assess their work areas for safety, comfort, and injury prevention.
• It is frequently more effective to have an observer evaluate staff members for helpful and friendly comfort recommendations rather than it is for individuals 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 demonstrate how small adjustment changes can frequently make large comfort changes.
• Partner with the employer’s workers’ compensation carrier to help develop ergonomic policies and practices and to offer employee training.