With this very fast paced job world it is very important to remember the environment that is being promoted in your workplace. Your employee’s health is often linked to the environment and the health of the company. The benefits of having healthy employees can produce increased job satisfaction, improved morale, reduced illness and injuries, and increased productivity. Creating a healthy environment is not hard, expensive or time consuming. Any business or organization can promote a healthy workplace. Here are some suggestions to get you started in the right direction:
Conquering Back Pain with Physical Activity
More than 80 percent of adults experience back pain at some point in their lives. In the past, it was commonly believed that rest was important for recovery from back pain. However, that is just not the case. Resting through a back injury can prolong your recovery. The longer you rest, the harder it becomes to resume your regular activities.The good news is that most back pain resolves if you treat it by being active. Staying active, as well as practicing good mechanics such as proper posture and lifting techniques, speeds up the recovery process and decreases the risk of chronic disability.Inactivity can prolong pain. When we are inactive, we become stiff, and our muscles and bones weaken. We can become depressed, and the pain can feel worse.
The earlier you get active, the sooner you’ll be able to resume your regular activities.
Source: Healthy Alberta
Being active is key to recovering from back pain. Understanding your pain and the benefits of staying active will help to ease your fears of causing further harm and will enable you to take an active role in recovery and prevention. Finding activities you enjoy will help you to recover quickly and to prevent future flare-ups.
When you allow your employees to stay at home and not remain active, it increases their time away from work. Our Health and Wellness Rooms address these issues in a positive and encouraging environment. With trained medical staff in each room, your employee will be encouraged within their restrictions to remain productive. This helps the employee maintain good mental health. Contact Proof:Positive and let us help you keep your injured employees active while enhancing their sense of confidence and well-being.
Personal Training: A Surprising Health and Wellness Room Benefit
I started training about four months ago. With an intense diet and lots of exercise, I went from a size 12 to a size 6. It was a lot of hard work, and not to mention sweat and being tired. I don’t think that I could have done it though if it wasn’t for my personal trainer. He was always there actually holding me accountable for being present at the gym, to provide a journal of the food I was eating, and was there to push me to be better.
Think of the Health and Wellness Room as your injured employees’ personal trainer of sorts. We are personally involved in the recovery of each individual that comes in. We want to see results, to see the recovery process take place and conclude. We are going to make sure that he/she is getting up and moving within the restrictions of their specific injury. That the motivation stays high to get back into the workplace and prevent being in a “daytime TV slump” because he/she can’t do what they could before. It encompasses all aspects of the recovery process. I know that there were days I didn’t want to go to the gym because I was tired, or I wasn’t seeing results every day and it was depressing at times. We here at the Health and Wellness Rooms can address that slump too.
We mix up the day here – we have stretch time, designated walk times, and educational experiences for your injury. We will teach your employees how to prevent further injury, instead of just telling them what to do and send them home. Finally the Health and Wellness Rooms will set the pace. We keep your employees in a routine, which is half the battle of setting the recovery in motion.
Your Proof:Positive personal trainer is waiting.
Medical Network Management – Active vs. Passive
Health care providers come in all stripes and the quality of care can vary greatly. Relying solely on your insurance carrier or TPA (third-party administrator) network can be costly. These networks are built by finding providers who will agree to a discounted reimbursement rate, in exchange for more referrals. Some of these providers see very few patients in the workers’ compensation system, and therefore, may not understand the role of early return-to-work in the employee’s recovery.
It’s important to work closely with providers that understand the workers’ compensation system and who can support an early return-to-work initiative, such as, Proof:Positive’s Health and Wellness Room model. Provider network discounts are of little value if the treatment regimen drags on…and on. Professionally-managed Health and Wellness Rooms hasten patient recovery and return-to-work by supporting treatment adherence and improving employee motivation.
Proof:Positive can help you identify providers who support an early return-to-work philopsophy. Contact Proof:Positive today.
Obesity and Healing: Educate your Employees
Obesity is an obstacle that many Americans face, and combining that with the recovery from an injury severely impacts the healing process. Results from a new study in Columbus, Ohio suggest that extremely obese people are more likely than normal-weight people to injure themselves. With this statistic looming, it is vital that we don’t let our injured go on without having the opportunity to change their lifestyle. While prevention is important, education after the fact is essential. Proof:Positive can help employers with new ideas to keep their employees healthy and fit, which can statistically decrease the number of work injuries.
Obesity combined with a simple knee injury, or even a complex surgery, is going to prolong the healing process severely. Obesity falls into an interference with wellness that is not always accounted for by claims adjusters. Although with anti-discriminatory laws you cannot force a diet or weight loss program to those who are overweight or mandate a smoker to quit, studies show that employees and employers favor a program that would educate, and even provide facilities to promote weight management and programs for weight loss. Participants of this survey were asked to disclose to what degree they favor specific health care and work policy blue prints for treating and preventing adult obesity. Seventy-three percent favored a move by health care companies to require obesity treatment and prevention. The same proportion favored beneficiary discounts by employers or health care companies to motivate individuals to maintain or move toward a healthy weight.
Be Proactive When It Comes to Workers Compensation Fraud
It is much easier to prevent workers compensation fraud than it is to prove it. As an employer it is important to make sure to hire people who have the skills and the character that best fit with your company. Having a sound hiring policy is a good place to start.
Here are a few suggestions on how to be proactive:
- Hire wisely. Conduct background checks on all applicants, and verify their references.
- Focus on safety. Making the workplace safer reduces the chance of accidents and the opportunity to fake an injury.
- Develop a return-to-work policy. Tell job candidates that if they get hurt on the job, the company will work with the doctor to help them return to work as soon as medically possible.
- Educate, don’t threaten. Explain that workers compensation fraud hurts everyone, not just the insurance carrier. Let employees know that fraudulent claims can force employers to decrease benefits, lay off employees, or go out of business.
- Adopt a zero-tolerance policy. Make it clear that fraud can carry serious consequences, including termination and prosecution.
- Stay in touch. Keep regular contact with employees who are off work due to injury or illness. Document each contact or attempted contact. Injured workers who are difficult to contact or who are belligerent may be committing fraud.
This may all sound like a lot to do to keep your company safe. Proof:Positive can help. Let one of our representatives show you how you can protect your business.
Help Your Injured Employees Heal Themselves
Many people injured at work place all of the responsibility of getting well on the doctor. But, what most injured workers do not appreciate is that you have the ability to heal yourself! The doctor is an important part of the process but he only guides you down the right path. It is up to you to walk that path towards recovery and a fast return to work.
“Understanding my injury helped me to recover, and the opportunity that I had here in the Health and Wellness Room to do my therapy and stay active during my rehabilitation is what got me back to work faster than when I hurt my back two years ago.” This is what one of our client’s injured workers told me when he brought in his return to work release papers. He said the information we provided about his injury really gave him an understanding of his injury. He told me that we were motivating him to go back to work. “I was able to walk, exercise, use heat and ice, but best of all I didn’t end up on the couch trying to heal. I feel like I got more attention in the Health and Wellness Room then I did from my doctor or therapist.”
When injured workers rely on the doctor to do all the healing they are prolonging their injury and return to work. They still have to do their therapy and remain active to keep their body from becoming weakened by injury. Help your employees learn about their injuries. This is how you heal with the assistance of a doctor. Knowledge of injuries and ways to prevent them in the future benefit everyone.
Health and Wellness Rooms provide a motivated atmosphere to return to work. Educational materials, therapy beds, ice and heat, medical professional on staff, and a common goal for returning injured workers back to their jobs. Getting off the couch each day keeps employees in work mode, which helps transition back to full duty. Keeping the mind set on returning to work helps the body heal. Exercise gets the blood circulating which helps promote healing. Giving your employees a motivated atmosphere to heal, keep a positive mental attitude and help with recovery.
Workers’ Compensation is Not Insurance
Too many employers believe that workers’ compensation is insurance. Premium rates, experience modifiers, claim reserves…this is not workers’ compensation. This is just a way to finance it.
Workers’ compensation was designed to ensure that injured employees have access to medical care and salary indemnification for work-related injuries. This system was established at a time when some employers maintained hazardous workplaces and abdicated their responsibilities to the injured worker.
Times have changed and our workplaces are much safer. But, many employers still neglect their duty to the injured worker when they do no more than purchase a workers’ compensation policy. Statute requires a system, not a policy.
So what goes into a workers’ compensation system?
Safety Programs – For a Healthy Balance Sheet
The quality of an organization’s safety programs forecasts an employees’ likelihood of entering the workers’ compensation system. The time and resources invested in enforcing safe work practices reflect the employer’s commitment, not only to guarding an employee from workplace hazards, but to protecting them from the hazards of our workers’ compensation system.
Carefully-crafted programs embed the standards for a safe workplace into daily operations. Successful programs begin with employee selection, protection of employees through training and hazard controls, engage employees in the process, and support the employee in their return to work, should they become injured. A safety program with this scope, protects an injured employee from a sometimes arbitrary and disabling workers’ compensation system.
Strong safety programs are the foundation upon which supportive and enriching tools can be provided to the injured employee. This is also the bedrock upon which substantial cost savings and productivity gains are built. Successful companies have already discovered the value of a strong safety program. In fact, it is rare that an organization enjoys high margins and strong revenue, in absence of a strong safety program.
Building a strong safety program begins with management commitment. If an organization lacks in-depth knowledge of workplace safety, or needs an objective assessment of their current program, a comprehensive review is in order. Proof Positive will develop a blueprint for safety program success.
Remember: Safety program quality is a proxy for balance sheet health.
The Numbers Are In: Workers Compensation is Costly!
Each day U.S. workers suffer injury, disability, and death from workplace incidents. According to the CDC, private-sector workers experience 11,500 nonfatal work-related injuries/illnesses each day; more than half of these injuries/illnesses require job transfer, work restrictions, or time away from their jobs as a result. Among all workers – public and private sectors – 9,000 workers are treated in emergency departments each day, and approximately 200 of these workers are hospitalized. In 2004, this resulted in an estimated 3.4 million nonfatal injuries and illnesses among civilian workers that were serious enough to be treated in hospital emergency departments. The prior year those injuries cost businesses like yours $554 Billion.
The workplace can be a dangerous place. But it doesn’t have to be. Having a safety plan or team can reduce the risks of injury. Also having a plan for the worker that does get injured will help save costs and time loss for your company. You need to guide your company to a safer and more educated environment that will pay for itself in reduced workers compensation claims. A full-service consulting consortium like Proof:Positive can aid in reducing and preventing workplace injuries, neutralizing fraud, and saving valuable insurance dollars; our mission is to reduce your company’s injury and illness costs.
We can help. But don’t take our word for it, check out some of our client testimonials, regarding how well our services worked for them.
