According to that banner hanging on the wall, your organization is striving for zero injuries. Safety comes first, of course.
Yet zero continues to elude you.
The most common and costly injuries, musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), continue to block you from your goal. It’s frustrating for the workplace athletes, the organization, and for you, the safety leader.
These unmet goals can be achieved (and the frustration of all parties avoided) with a successful MSD prevention process.
Successful MSD prevention rests on four essential pillars.
Pillar #1 – Prevention-focused
MSD management after the injury has already occurred is important. But by then it’s too late. Prevention will always be the best medicine, and focusing your efforts here will bring you the highest return on your resources.
It’s smarter to prevent an injury than to treat one. The goal is zero. The focus is on reducing risk.
All risk. And that leads us to the second pillar …
Pillar #2 – Comprehensive
The interaction between the work environment and the worker is complex, and there are many risk factors that cause MSDs. A world-class MSD prevention process is comprehensive and systematically controls all causative risk factors.
Prevention is proactive. A proactive ergonomics process combined with proactive healthcare puts a powerful tool in your injury prevention toolbox. If you’re struggling with MSDs at your facility, the problem might be that you don’t have all the right tools in your toolbox.
It will take a full tool-set to fix the problem. Focus your efforts on comprehensively reducing all risk factors.
Pillar #3 – Sustainable
MSD prevention will not be effective as a one-time event. An ongoing, systematic, process-driven approach to reducing MSD risk factors becomes more and more valuable over time.
Let’s say you make workplace improvements and reduce 50 risk factors a year. By the fourth year, you’ve now made 200 improvements. In the fifth year, making the same exact investment you made in the previous years, you’ll reduce another 50 risk factors bringing the total to 250. The point is that you always get to bring the past improvements with you. They add up.
If the MSD prevention process is going to make a major difference for your organization it needs to be sustainable and reduce risk factors over a long period of time. A sustainable process yields exponential results.
Pillar #4 – Profitable
A big MSD problem presents you with a big MSD prevention opportunity. An MSD prevention process that is prevention-focused, comprehensive and sustainable gains value over time, providing you with a healthy return on your investment and a major win for your organization (and your career).
Stay tuned …
Do you want a prevention-focused, comprehensive, sustainable, and profitable MSD prevention process?
Stay tuned, because soon we’re going to open the doors of our all-new online platform for MSD prevention tools and training. If you like the Ergonomics Plus resource center, you’re going to love this.
