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Published on Feb 21
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Your wellness program has potential far beyond improving health outcomes for your employees. These programs have also been shown to help reduce workplace injuries – keeping your workers’ compensation premiums in check. Rather than managing safety and wellness in silos, integrating your wellness program team and your safety team is the best way to achieve this goal. Here are just a few ways that your wellness program can help you achieve your safety goals and reduce workplace injuries.
Weighty issues
Wellness programs that focus on overall health, developing healthier eating habits, and increasing physical activity levels also have the goal of helping employees achieve a healthier weight. Obesity has significant long-term impacts on the health of the individual and can have a major impact on your workers’ comp premiums.
In a 2007 Duke University study, researchers confirmed what many employers had long suspected; obesity can significantly contribute to medical costs and workplace injuries. In fact, the study found that obese employees filed twice as many workers’ comp claims as their non-obese counterparts and the medical costs of these claims were seven times higher! And the impact on the cost of the claim doesn’t stop there – obese employees accumulated 13 times more TTD days due to their injuries than their counterparts.
Give it a rest
Wellness program organizers should think about the causes of workplace injuries when creating the agenda or focus of their program. One of the most commonly cited reasons for workplace incidents is fatigue, tiredness, and lack of focus.
The 2015 Fatigue Management Study identified that a common cause of fatigue at work was a lack of sleep or poor sleep habits at home. Programs that encourage employees to get more restorative sleep can go a long way to helping reduce injuries in the workplace. Pay special attention to employees that have identified that they have a sleep disorder. The risk of workplace injury doubles for these employees!
Get physical
No matter the profession of your employees, physical fitness can go a long way in helping your employees reduce workplace injuries that are the most common. Think about how your wellness program can encourage your employees to take part in fitness activities and establish other healthy habits that directly relate to your industry’s most common injuries.
In 2016, overexertion accounted for 35 percent of workplace injuries resulting from work performed while lifting or lowering projects or while doing repetitive motions. Making frequent stretching part of your wellness program can contribute to injury prevention from overexertion. You can even make it a group activity throughout the day to make sure that everyone is getting the best return for their participation in the program.
If it fits your budget or you can find a gym partner, you may even want to consider offering gym membership discounts as a way to help get employees more active during their nonworking hours. You can also give employees the option to switch to standing desks and encourage the formation of lunchtime walking groups to encourage employees to do less sitting and more moving.
The importance of mental health
Mental and emotional stress can cause employees to become distracted at work and lead to serious accidents and injuries. Make mental health a central component of your wellness program to help employees deal with stress (both in their personal and work life). Encourage employees to participate in yoga or meditation activities. Supporting employees when they need to take a mental health day helps reduce the stigma around mental health issues and encourage employees to seek the help and tools they need. This can go a long way to help reduce workplace injuries that are distraction-related.
Wellness and injury reduction with Sheakley
Manageable and preventable health issues can significantly contribute to your company’s workers’ compensation claims and medical costs. Employers who integrate their wellness program teams with their safety team can see significant improvements to both the overall wellness of their employees and a reduction in workplace injuries. Your teams should work together to create an incentives-based wellness promotion and injury prevention program that includes smoking cessation, healthy eating, physical activity, and a drug-free lifestyle that can help with your company’s health insurance premiums and keep your workers’ comp claims costs under control.
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