I’ve met with A LOT of businesses over the past twenty years, and almost all of them tell me that they have the same three problems:

They want to improve their business’ safety and injury management practices.

BUT they don’t have the data to develop any meaningful strategies

They don’t know how to effectively triage and manage ill and injured workers. 

The workers comp’ process can be harsh and they have trouble tracking their workers recovery progress

They are just sick and tired of hurting people! 

BUT they don’t really have a plan to deal with it in the long term

All of these issues can be addressed with the commitment of time and resources, along with enlisting the help of someone with experience and expertise in this area.

Data is key!

Many businesses don’t have any meaningful health data about their workforce. Some have too much data and they’re not sure how to interpret it, or they have disparate data sets that just don’t talk to each other.

In order to build meaningful strategies for managing ill and injured workers, you really need to know what you’re dealing with. Data can help your business understand which jobs are hurting people the most, and which people are getting hurt most often. 

I often meet with businesses who use multiple external healthcare providers. Each of these providers report back to the business in a different format (or not at all), which can make it almost impossible to understand what is really going on…

• What was the cause of an injury?
• Could you have detected this earlier?
• Could it have been prevented entirely?
• Is there an underlying condition that could prolong the worker’s recovery time?

It’s really important to find a consistent way to measure and monitor the health and wellbeing of your workforce. Without this, there’s no basis for developing a strategy that will help you to proactively prevent injuries and manage risk within your business. Or in other words, keep your people safe and healthy, reduce your WorkCover premiums and improve the overall productivity of your workforce.

Over time, and with a bit of help, you will also be able to start to explore other opportunities for improvement. Things like recruitment processes and screening, tailored rehabilitation and Return to Work programs, work hardening, job specific induction training, or even opportunities for automation to reduce injury and improve productivity.

Yes, there is an investment in money, time and resources, and it requires a great deal of expertise to implement the relevant systems and processes. But, the important thing to remember is that the rewards to your business and your employees will far outweigh all of these costs.

After all, can you really put a price on the health and wellbeing of your workforce?