Employment Functional Capacity & Injury Risk Assessment: optimising employee fitness, health and productivity.
Prepared by: Nick Heywood-Smith
Presented by: Wellness & Lifestyles Australia
An employee focused approach to manual handling risk management.
A Staff Wellness program is a specialist functional fitness assessment and programming service designed to reduce the incidence of work-related injury and its financial impact within the work environment. It is developed to optimise employee fitness, health and productivity.
Specialists assess the physical demands of independent work tasks and the work environment, and execute customised fitness assessments on employees to identify functional fitness capacity and the prevalence of risk. Education and individual conditioning programs are then provided to enhance fitness and maintain optimal health and well being.
Has your organisation ever had the following issues:
- high WorkCover claims
- poor productivity levels
- high risk of injuries to staff due to poor employee fitness & strength
You’re not alone. Nearly all aged care facilities that we deal with have staff members on WorkCover or restricted duties following an injury. Statistics are that 1 in 15 staff in aged care sustain an injury in a calendar year and the incidence of injury for staff working in aged care facilities is approximately 75% higher than the average for all Australian industries. This can be a massive cost to the organisation!
That is why W&L has created the Staff Wellness education session which helps employees and employers better understand the risks associated with poor staff wellness and what can be done about it.
What this training can do for you…
- get all levels of staff onboard to understand the importance of staff wellness
- improve your staff’s understanding of manual handling, the risks associated and the importance of optimised physical fitness and strength
- gain a better understanding of the assessment process that can be performed by your physiotherapist onsite
- teach your staff important exercises that can be done to strengthen different parts of the body to reduce injury
Involved in this training is…
- The assessment process in detail including:
- height and weight assessment (Body Mass Index)
- joint range of movement/musculotendinous unit integrity
- specific flexibility assessment
- hyper mobility testing
- local muscular endurance (squat test)
- lower abdominal strength/endurance testing
- functional grip strength – dynamometry
- cardiovascular capacity (step test)
- The preparation before assessment:
- medical screening
- footwear and clothing
- hydration
- The reporting procedure:
- recommendations
- reporting
Who should use this training?
You and your staff should go through this training if you have staff at your facility that could improve their overall fitness and strength or if you have a high incidence of work-related injuries at your site. It has been developed to optimise employee fitness, health and productivity.
Some sites we’ve provided training to and performed the Staff Wellness program have significantly reduced their work-related injuries. This has in turn reduced the WorkCover claims and levies at these sites.
We’ve realised that not all staff at facilities need (or want) a specialist functional fitness assessment. For this reason we have developed this training to give them a better understanding of the process and how it can massively improve their fitness, health and productivity. So if you want to improve your strength and fitness, click on this link to watch this presentation.
