Learn how your safety team can achieve better health outcomes, create significant business value, and shape a better safety culture with a strategic early intervention initiative.

Having been integrated into numerous worksites over the years, we have found several common problems safety teams need to overcome to create sustainable value.

See if your safety team isn’t dealing with at least one of these issues:

• You and your team are in a continual struggle to prevent the most common injuries, resulting in poor health outcomes.
  Costly musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are a common occurrence and most effort is geared toward reactively managing costs after an injury occurs.
• Safety often fails to align with business objectives and demonstrate value creation, resulting in safety being dismissed from their seat at the table.
  You’re struggling to articulate how safety enables profitability and productivity instead of being in competition with production and the overall goals of the organization.
• Employees at your organization are disengaged and indifferent to safety, resulting in a poor safety culture.
  There is an “us” verses “them” mentality – a disconnect between management and frontline workers that erodes trust, frustrates any effort to achieve a common goal, and sends your safety culture into a tailspin.

Sound familiar?

If so, there is a safety strategy within our domain expertise as an ergonomics and injury prevention service provider that is emerging as a solution to the common challenges you face – strategic early intervention.

We’ve been practicing strategic early intervention for nearly three decades, but recently it has been gaining momentum and is finally entering the mainstream.

Early intervention programs emphasize the early reporting of fatigue and discomfort prior to a major musculoskeletal imbalance or documented injury. Programs operate under the umbrella of “evaluation and first aid” as defined by OSHA and are primarily managed by Certified Athletic Trainers (or who we call injury prevention specialists) who have deep expertise in both ergonomics and healthcare.

By emphasizing early reporting of fatigue and discomfort, an on-site injury prevention specialists is then able to implement ergonomic and individual control methods to lower injury risk and prevent fatigue from developing into an injury and recordable case.

• Strategic early intervention prevents early signs of fatigue from progressing into an injury.  
  Instead of dealing with costly musculoskeletal disorders, you can achieve world class health outcomes.
• By shifting the focus from treatment to prevention, you can transform musculoskeletal health from a cost center to a profit center.
  Instead of reactively managing costs when injuries occur, demonstrate value by getting out in front of injuries and driving improved human performance and productivity.
• Consistent early interventions mitigate risk to employees and improve their lives at work and at home.
  Instead of having disengaged and indifferent employees resulting in presenteeism, absenteeism and lost productivity, you can unlock the human potential of your organization by giving people the opportunity to do their best work.

These programs have many benefits and can be the solution to the common challenges you face as a safety leader at a manufacturing facility or distribution center.

And frankly, the health outcomes achieved by progressive organizations implementing early intervention programs demand that your safety team investigate the potential benefits such a program can have for your organization.

This is the first installment in a new series on Early Intervention. Here is what is coming up next:

Early Intervention: Your Safety Team’s Strategic Advantage

Early intervention is a strategic approach that underpins how successful (or not) your safety team will be at managing the musculoskeletal health of your employee population.

Keeping Your Early Intervention Program Compliant

Understanding OSHA regulatory law is imperative to designing a compliant early intervention program.

Designing Your Early Intervention Program

Effective early intervention programming focuses on delivering preventive healthcare upstream to promote musculoskeletal health where it drives better outcomes and the highest value on your investment.

Achieve Better Health Outcomes

The health outcomes achieved by progressive organizations implementing early intervention programs demand that your safety team investigate the potential benefits such a program can have for your organization.

Stay Tuned

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See you next week!