Business leaders often make the mistake of dismissing human capital as an expense rather than a renewable resource. A healthy and ready workforce is an undeniable asset that’s critical to operational success and is well worth the investment and resources required to maintain it.
Why should companies invest in an injury prevention program?
U.S. businesses spend more than $1 billion every week on workplace injuries and related health issues. According to OSHA, musculoskeletal disorders are the most common workplace injury and average 13 days of lost time per occurrence. Any unexpected or uncontrolled movement can result in trauma to muscles, tendons, and ligaments, and the most common soft-tissue injuries are ankle, back, calf, and hamstring strains. The good news: workplace injuries are preventable, and companies that take proactive steps can avoid their disruptive effects and financial burden.
Direct costs are just the tip of the iceberg
Every injury has a physical and financial cost, creating a chain of events that impedes a company’s growth and bottom line. It is easy to understand the direct costs of injuries, like medical bills and workers comp, but what about the indirect costs? The compounding effects of musculoskeletal disorders and injuries in particular can be difficult to calculate, but failing to do so is not in the best interest of any organization.
For every dollar in direct costs associated with a work-related injury, there is an average of $4 in additional indirect costs. A single injury can easily begin a reactive cycle of poor recovery, recurrent injuries, and accumulating workers’ comp costs. It may result in disruption to production output and quality control, increased administrative costs, declining employee morale, and the loss of reputation and future business.
Another common casualty of workplace injuries is employee retention. How will the resulting absenteeism or presenteeism affect your business? In today’s competitive job market, finding a replacement with similar skills and experience will be challenging, possibly forcing you to pay more for someone less skilled. Consider the impact of a musculoskeletal injury to a skilled 30-year technician that leaves them unable to return to work. You can train a 3-year technician or even a temp worker to replace them, but you still can’t replace the gap in job-specific expertise overnight. In fact, it may take years. That loss of collective knowledge—an invaluable aspect of human capital— echoes throughout an organization and can have a dramatic and long-lasting effect on a company’s productivity and bottom line.
A healthy workforce is more productive
According to the CDC, employers in the United States lose around $225 billion a year due to absenteeism. When employees are not feeling well, they are less likely to show up to work, impacting a company’s productivity. On the other hand, physically or mentally exhausted people are less productive and more prone to injury if they do show up.
Numerous studies have shown that chronic conditions, including type II diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease, are strongly associated with higher healthcare utilization and medical expenses for both patients and employers. Employees with “clusters” of cardiometabolic risk factors report 179% more missed work days on average.
By taking proactive steps to improve employee well-being and health, a company can boost morale and have fewer people out sick or with injuries, positively affecting their bottom line.
Why investing in people is as essential as investing in machinery
Consider why companies spend so much money just maintaining tools and equipment, with entire maintenance departments dedicated to preventing the breakdown of these components. Unfortunately, the same companies often do not provide the same level of attention and care to avoid the breakdown of their employees, without whom most businesses could not function.
Equipment is essential, but what good is it without the people operating it? Their functionality and well-being are integral to and inseperable from the success of the company as a whole. Investing in employee injury prevention is as important as investing in top-of-the-line machinery— your company needs both to succeed, especially in the long term.
Taking a sports medicine approach to employee injury prevention
When you look at a professional sports team, the organization is structured similarly to any other large company in the United States. First, you have owners at the top, and as you move down, you have executive-level management, field-level management, and finally, the players and employees.
Ensuring that players are injury-free and in peak physical condition is how the best teams in the world win championships. Professional sports organizations have invested time and resources into recruiting and training the best players and want to position them in a way that produces the best results possible. They accomplish this by leveraging sports medicine principles to protect their players from injury and prepare their bodies for the intense physical demands of their jobs.
This is no different than any other company that invests in recruiting and training the best people possible and placing them in strategic positions within the organization. The game might be different, but the goal is the same; they want to win, and they must protect the investment in their people to do that. Therefore, it makes sense for businesses to take the same sports medicine approach to injury prevention that a professional sports organization would.
When your star players are out of the game, the entire organization suffers. Would the Chicago Bulls have been able to build as powerful a dynasty as they had in the ’90s if Michael Jordan was sitting on the sidelines? Will your company beat out the fierce competition within the industry if your MVP is out of the game?
How preventive programs reduce the frequency and severity of injuries
Musculoskeletal disorders continue to affect workers worldwide at an alarming rate, particularly in industries such as manufacturing, utilities, and food processing. Companies that are serious about reducing injuries and protecting the health and well-being of their employees must begin taking proactive steps forward. Adopting an injury prevention program that takes advantage of sports medicine principles is a great way to do that.
Key program elements that keep workers injury-free and performing at their best:
- On-site ergonomic coaching
Provides employees with the knowledge to work safer and more efficiently, while avoiding at-risk behavior and body positioning.
- Pre-shift exercise programs
Prepares employees for the physical demands of their work. Research has shown that active warm ups that target job-specific muscle groups are more effective at preventing injury than traditional stretch & flex programs.
- One-on-one evaluations
BIOKINETIX can help
Modern companies don’t just to react to injuries; they want to prevent them from happening in the first place. The Science Of More UpTime by BIOKINETIX is a breakthrough process to change the way businesses work with their employees on injury prevention, health, well-being, and productivity. It brings you customized programs designed to confront the issue of work-related injury and illness in a sustainable way for incredible results. BIOKINETIX’s game-changing approach to occupational medicine has saved its clients more than $109 million since 2004.
Schedule a demo today to discover how BIOKINETIX can help prevent your next workplace injury.
