Strategies for injury prevention in an AGING WORKFORCE
Part 1 - Preventive maintenance for your most valuable assets—your experienced workers

With Baby Boomers hitting their fifties, employers are feeling the impact of the aging workforce—a fast growing segment of the worker population. Fifty-two percent of workers are over 50 today, and 75 percent will remain in the workforce until age 65 or older. These workers are often your most experienced, knowledgeable employees. They are also the group most susceptible to cumulative trauma disorders (CTDs) such as injuries to necks, backs, shoulders, wrists, and knees. To compound the problem, half of the American population is overweight and out of shape—additional risk factors for CTDs. These injuries make up half of all Workers Comp and health care costs.

As an efficient, productive facility, you probably have comprehensive preventive maintenance plans for all your key process equipment. But do you have a preventive maintenance plan for your workforce?

Public agencies and private industries alike face a growing dilemma in today’s work place: How to keep their aging—and most valuable worker assets—healthy and productive. Take a look at your employee population, what do you see? A fit team of young, highly productive workers or an aging workforce that can barely see their toes, let alone lift properly. These days, an effective facility safety program is not complete unless it includes a system to keep the workers fit, healthy and productive. Here’s some proven strategies to keep those muscles, joints, tendons, and ligaments well “oiled”, and hopefully prevent a costly replacement.

Make the Safety/Fitness Connection

It only takes a little stretch to make the safety/fitness connection. With back injuries a leading cause of work absenteeism, proper lifting is essential to preventing injury. Yet if you observed your workers, would you see them lifting with their legs? The truth is, lack of flexibility in the hamstrings, lack of basic strength, and excessive weight (around the waistline) prevents many workers from lifting properly because they simply can’t get into the correct position. A daily flexibility and strength program can improve worker fitness, eliminate pain and fatigue, and bring your recordable injury rate down--fast. The trick is getting your workers to do it every day.

In 2001, the Surgeon General reported that 60% of adults don’t exercise enough to maintain basic health; one in four adults are totally sedentary. And it’s no secret that Heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, and stoke are all highly preventable by proper diet and exercise. People know they should exercise, but statistics show that half of those who start exercise programs with good intentions end up quitting within six months, and 90 percent quit within one year. It is unrealistic to think that offering subsidized gym memberships or providing a stretch video to workgroups will result in any significant improvements.

Forget the passive approach

While wellness fairs and HR brochures about heart disease and diabetes certainly have their value, they have had little effect on changing behavior. The reality is, most people wait until that first heart attack or stroke before they act to improve their health.

It will take more than pamphlets and health fairs to motivate the general workforce toward fitness and lasting lifestyle change:

n Employers must build in time for daily fitness if they want to keep workers of all ages healthy and productive.

n Employers must educate their workforce about the risks to themselves and to the organization’s survival.

n Employers must abandon the passive approach and integrate health and fitness into daily operations.

What makes a worksite health and fitness program successful?

“We’ve implemented successful programs at worksites that have tried a do-it-yourself approach, and failed,” says Fred Drennan, President of Team Safety, Inc. a safety consulting firm that specializes in reducing the incidence and severity of musculoskeletal injuries (MSDs) in the aging workforce. “The old stretch videos are sitting on the shelf, the onsite gym strategy (often very costly) gets only 10 to 15 percent use, and the employees who need it the most tend to ignore the entire effort.” Team Safety’s daily flexibility and strength programs regularly get 85 to 100 percent participation and achieve significant reductions in MSDs. A large manufacturing plant with over 300 employees and an average worker age of 47 saw their injury rate—the majority comprising MSDs—go from 14.8 at program startup to under 4.3 within eight months. A university facility maintenance and housing group of 250 employees lowered their workers comp cost by half a million dollars in one year. A unionized group of wastewater treatment plant operators got 100 percent participation in their daily flexibility program; and they reported immediate reductions in back, neck, and other musculoskeletal pain and strain. A county road maintenance worker credited side lunges performed during his group’s daily flexibility and strength routine with preventing a serious groin pull when wet leaves caused him to slip and do the “splits” down a 60 ft embankment.

All these programs took place on company time and none report any loss of productivity. In addition to reducing lost time injuries, they reported start times, absenteeism, and productivity all improved.

What makes an effective flexibility and strength routine?

Effective worksite fitness routines are more than a simple warm ups. They include flexibility and strength stretches for all major muscle groups. They emphasize improved flexibility and strength of prime mover muscle groups such as hamstrings and quadriceps essential for safe lifting. The routine is taught and frequently audited by qualified fitness professionals who can spot potential problems, ensure participants get the benefits of each stretch, and train employees on proper biomechanics and ergonomics at their worksites. The routine takes place at the worksite with the natural work group and takes about 10 minutes of company time.

Key Elements of Successful Fitness/Safety/Leadership Integration

The most successful worksite fitness programs have certain key management elements in common which very quickly bring about a major culture change. The change may be initiated by the safety department, but to be widely embraced by the entire worker population (essential for maximum RIR reductions) worksite fitness must become a core process at your facility. That can only come from top management.

n Senior Management Must Initiate the Culture Change

n Senior management must manage the processes.

n Supervisor Safety Leadership Training

n Supervisors must learn and apply safety leadership skills on the job. (Giving positive recognition, giving constructive feedback, setting tolerance levels, team building, goal setting, scorekeeping for safety systems, and supervisor as trainer.)

n Team-based Systems are used to maximize all safety performance

n “Stretch” teams can be used to promote other daily safety activity.

n Natural work groups make the best teams

n Daily flexibility and strength training becomes a core process

n Fit workers are more productive and less prone to injury

n Flexibility is a first step everyone can take to improve fitness

n Install Measurement Systems

n Include baseline and progressive flexibility testing so participants can see their progress

n Integrate safety training during the fitness routine

n The fitness routine must become a part of the safety meeting and therefore mandatory.

n Install Audit systems

n To assess supervisor and team performance, frequent auditing is required.

n Accountability at Supervisor and Team Level

n Recognize and reward high performance at the supervisor, team, and individual level.

n Provide consequences for low performance.

n Senior managers must regularly review SuperScorecards at staff meetings.

Supervisor leadership is key to implementing any safety initiative at the team level. PART II of Strategies for Injury Prevention in an Aging Workforce presents key elements in achieving Supervisor Accountability for Safety Leadership. Watch for it in next month’s edition of Facility Safety.