Companies spend large sums of money and allocate tremendous resources to maintain their equipment and facilities. The intention of these investments of course is to maximize productivity and minimize interruptions in business. What about employees? Should they not be maintained as well? Would there not be benefits from “employee maintenance” as there are from maintaining equipment and facilities? Just as tools and equipment require maintenance to prevent the negative effects of wear and tear, so too do workers need to be maintained for the same reasons.

A burgeoning concept in workplace injury prevention is called employee maintenance.

Relating to our aging workforce especially, the purpose of employee maintenance is to impact employees’ “bio-physics” (strength, flexibility, balance, coordination, endurance) so that as they age, they continue to tolerate the physical stresses of their jobs safely. The better an employee’s bio-physics, the more likely the job’s stresses will be tolerated without provoking pain, and without causing injury.

For employees that do develop pain the purpose of an employee maintenance program is to address symptoms before they develop into repetitive stress injuries and costly claims. By educating workers, as well as supervisors and safety personnel, in early symptom recognition, employees are more apt to identify the signs of common muscular skeletal disorders (MSDs) as they begin to emerge. When they understand the implications of their symptoms there is increased likelihood that they will seek solutions, typically via the onsite convenience of an employee maintenance program, before the symptoms put them at risk of injury. Once employees’ pain is effectively managed, they are unencumbered by symptoms to be successful with strengthening and conditioning programs that are integral in the success of an employee maintenance program.

Employee Maintenance – InjuryFree Successes

Since 1995 InjuryFree has pioneered at-the-jobsite injury prevention programs and in 2000 opened its first Employee Maintenance Center (EMC), inside a Fortune 200 company’s paper manufacturing facility in Everett, WA. For the last decade InjuryFree’s EMCs have undergone continuous development, have gained acceptance at manufacturing facilities nationally, and have generated outstanding return on investment for companies using them. At one such facility in Conway, AR, an InjuryFree EMC began operations, under the supervision of the facility’s safety department, in January 2005.

A primary reason for the implementation of an EMC in this location was this plant’s having experienced a substantial increase in the number of claims, particularly those of the micro-trauma variety. As reported in the article, Breaking Through the Musculoskeletal Injury Plateau, published in the Journal of Workers Compensation, by the end of the first year 297 of the 480 employees, 62%, accessed the EMC’s services. There was also a substantial reduction in claims costs associated with both micro and macro-trauma injuries. Claims costs for micro-traumas alone decreased from over $250,000 in 2004 to around $150,000 in 2005, and total medical costs for injuries decreased from nearly $350,000 to between $150,000 and $200,000 in the same time period.

By the end of the EMC program’s second year 70% of employees had accessed the EMC and even greater reductions in injury claims costs were observed. In 2006 claims costs associated with micro-traumas were effectively eliminated altogether, and total medical costs for claims were reduced to approximately $125,000. Thus in two years total medical claims costs were decreased by 64% percent.

By December 2008, 88% of the plant’s population had accessed the EMC’s services. At the time the Journal of Workers Compensation article was published in 2008, the Conway plant had not incurred any claims costs relating to micro-traumas between 2006 and 2008. Macro-traumas had also seen a continuous decline, and total medical claims costs had decreased to nearly $0.

To see how employee maintenance can demonstrate savings in your facility, sign up for a free cost-benefit analysis for your location – available free for a limited time!