Employee Wellness Plans : Workplace Wellness Program Ideas: Safety and Wellness

Other departments within a company 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 monetary loss for workers’ compensation. Many health care 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. Offer training to work groups so they may begin a stretching program. These groups can then continue on their own.
• The Company Health Promotion 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 yearly 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.
• Launch a safety problems suggestion box. Urge workers to report safety and/or injury problems. Help management 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 subject matters 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.
• Provide ergonomic training opportunities to interested staff members volunteers. These individuals can then support  other staff members to evaluate their work areas for safety, comfort, and injury prevention.
• It is often more effective to have an observer evaluate employees for helpful and friendly comfort ideas rather than it is for people to assess themselves.
• One suggestion is to have workers 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 frequently make large comfort changes.
• Partner with the employer’s workers’ compensation carrier to help develop ergonomic policies and practices and to support employee training.