Workers' Compensation

Preventing Workplace Injuries

Ella Baker
Preventing Workplace Injuries
Reading time 5 Mins
Published on Aug 22
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How your MCO can help you and your employees avoid injury

While work-related injuries can vary between industries and workplaces, there are some steps that all employers can take to prevent or reduce the number of injuries sustained by employees. Your Managed Care Organization (MCO) can work with you to identify specific preventable injuries, and provide tips on how to avoid these injuries in the future. Your employee are your most important asset and these tips can help ensure that you are providing them with the highest level of protection in the workplace.

Safety training

Provide training to employees on the importance of following safety measures. Designed to make sure that employees know how to handle certain situations and equipment, safety training is vital to the ongoing health of your staff and workplace. By understanding how to react to situations, your employees will be better equipped to avoid potential injuries or to lessen the degree of injuries when they do occur. Research and provide access to both internal and external training opportunities for your employees.

Equipment

Ensuring employees have the proper Personal Protective Equipment for their position can help prevent many injuries. Take time to teach employees how to properly use goggles, face protection, gloves, hard hats, safety shoes, and earplugs or ear muffs. Encourage employee feedback on the efficacy of existing equipment or the need for additional equipment.

Stretching

Stretching before the shift begins and throughout the day prepares muscles and keeps the body prepared for activity and prevents injuries. Please note some employees may need to check with their doctor’s before beginning any type of stretching program. While some companies have reported successful reduction in injuries attributed to stretching programs, there may also be a psychological benefit at work in a stretching program. Company managers and workers together in space doing a common activity can promote bonding and increase workplace morale. This semi-social grouping or bonding in the workplace creates the perception of caring and support felt by employees from management.

Neat and tidy

Keeping your workplace neat and orderly, objects cleared from hallways, proper lighting along with other housekeeping habits can prevent various types of injuries. Housekeeping goes beyond personal cleanliness. It also includes keeping work areas orderly, taking care of any slip-and-trip hazards as soon as they arise, and removing waste and fire hazards regularly. Assess your work environment with a critical eye and pay attention to the layout of the workplace, aisle marking, adequacy of storage and maintenance. Encourage employees to report dangers or deficiencies right away to help prevent potential injuries.

Identify hazards

Encourage employees to report unsafe work conditions to a supervisor immediately. Identifying and eliminating potential hazards is one of the primary ways that you can reduce the risk of injury for your employees.

Create a plan in place to identify safety vulnerabilities. You may be able to identify some of your specific vulnerabilities by the types of injuries you are experiencing. Your MCO can help you identify the trends in your claims and thus, assist in developing a plan to prevent injuries.

You can also create body and hazard maps that can help you identify sources of injuries. A body map is an image that shows what parts of the body your employees have injured. By using this map, you can determine what injuries or illnesses your workers have in common. Hazard maps are maps of your physical workplace with markers of locations where injuries have occurred or the assignment area of injured employees. Using this map can allow you to identify specific locations that need to be addressed or ergonomic issues that may be related to particular workstations.

Inspect and maintain

It is important to not only train employees how to use equipment, tools, machines and vehicles properly, but it is also important to inspect them on a regular basis to ensure proper working order. Your company should have protocol in place for employees to follow when they identify a problem, including immediately reporting the issue to a supervisor.

Investing in the right equipment for your employees is a great step to helping them perform their jobs better and safer but ensuring that they take a little extra time to inspect and maintain that equipment is equally important. A little time spent on prevention can mean a lot of money saved on injury reduction.

Safety programs

The foundation for any safe work environment is an effective safety program. These programs are not one size fits all – you will need to customize your program to fit the needs of your industry and business. Generally, safety programs may include a safety committee made up of representatives from across the company, trainings, recognition opportunities, incentives when goals are met, and encouragement of employees to report potential safety hazards.

Working with your Ohio MCO experts will allow you to develop the tools to identify preventable injuries, recognize weaknesses in your current safety program, and recommendations to help you implement specific strategies based on your industry and business.

A partner you can trust

Your MCO serves both the best interest of your company and your employees. Having a partner in your corner that you trust to look out for the best interests of your employees while returning them to work quickly and keeping your workers’ compensation costs down is vital to the success of your business. An MCO partner like Sheakley UniComp can guide you and your workers through the often confusing world of workers’ compensation, helping your employees return to work quickly and safely.

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