Miller Health, occupational health and fitness

In workplaces across the country the blame for a highly significant proportion of workers compensation claims is being unfairly sheeted home to employers.

In fact I'd go as far as to say that 80% of the ‘injuries’ we’re seeing are occurring as a result of personally generated dysfunctions attributable to low levels of strength and flexibility.

The pain people experience is the symptom of bodies that are out of alignment. They're not injured, just out of alignment.

We know this is true because of the high incidence of ‘injuries’ in safe workplaces, places where people sit down all day, don’t lift 44 gallon drums onto utes, don’t fall off ladders or trip over cords.

In the workforces that are required to do manual handling the incidence of 'injuries' is high, not because of the manual handling per se, not because people are lifting heavy objects or falling off roofs, but because, like their colleagues in the sit down professions they are neither strong enough nor flexible enough to do their manual work without breaking down.


3.	Providing staff with the opportunity to keep their bodies strong, flexible and in alignment.

4.	Reducing the number of straws that are known back breakers.

5.	Making sure that backs can withstand the pressure of the straws that are likely to lob on their backs.

6.	Making your staff, their doctors and your workers compensation insurer aware the you will resist their efforts to put their hand in your organisation's pocket to fund the treatment of personally-generated musculo-skeletal dysfunctions.

Key Performance Indicators

The role of monitoring musculo-skeletal health cannot be left to OH&S managers alone. It's too tough an assignment. It has to be devolved down to workgroups in the same way that safety issues are devolved.

The concept of zero tolerance involves organisations establishing a key performance indicator (KPI) for all managers and supervisors that holds them responsible for

•	not letting personally generated dysfunctions being passed off as work-related injuries.

•	monitoring the strength, flexibility and musculo-skeletal health of their staff

•	putting in train workplace strength and flexibility training initiatives to ensure staff are strong enough and flexible enough to do their jobs (what ever they may be) without breaking down

•	providing senior management and OH&S management with objective information that enables the organisation to absolve itself from responsibility (and workers compensation claims) for musculo-skeletal dysfunctions that are not caused by the workplace

Question: what's the best way I can prevent my organisation from being blamed for personally generated musculo-skeletal dysfunctions?

Question: how can I dramatically improve the strength and flexibility of my staff?

Question: How can I save my organisation a fortune in workers compensation claims?

THE ZERO TOLERANCE SEMINAR - a 4 hour presentation for managers and supervisors on

•	Best Practice in Occupational Health, Fitness and Wellbeing

•	putting in place an OH&S Firewall

•	the Crookback Clinic

•	the Zero Tolerance concept and the responsibilities of managers and supervisors

•	how to prevent musculo-skeletal dysfunction.

•	how to diagnose the likely cause of musculo-skeletal dysfunction

•	how to foster activities that contribute to enhanced musculo-skeletal health of themselves and their staff.

The principal outcome of the seminar is that OH&S staff, managers and supervisors will become adept at running a Zero Tolerance musculo-skeletal health program that provides their staff with simple, proven strength and flexibility exercises designed to get and then keep their bodies in better alignment.

	•	establishing a best practice approach to occupational health, fitness and wellbeing

	•	tackling the high costs absenteeism, presenteeism, workers compensation and retention

	•	obtaining a benchmark of the musculo-skeletal health of your workforce and firing staff up to willingly take part in a regular and systematic strength and flexibility training program

	•	introducing managers and supervisors to the key performance indicators by which a musculo-skeletal health management program can be evaluated

	•	introducing managers and supervisors to their role in preventing personally generated musculo-skeletal dysfunctions from becoming work-related injuries

	•	creating awareness in managers and supervisors of the need to be intimately involved in the process that seeks to promote musculo-skeletal health

	•	letting managers experience for the themselves what the CrookBack Clinic is all about. If they don’t know what it is they will not be able enroll their staff in it.

	•	training managers and supervisors to be aware of the common causes of musculo-skeletal dysfunction.

	•	giving them the confidence to involve their staff in 10 minutes of strength and flexibility exercise each day.

In the mean time stay tuned, highly tuned and remember that most of the 'injuries' in workplaces are personally-generated dysfunctions caused by bodies that are weak, tight and out of alignment. What happens at work is merely the straw that breaks the camel’s back, the incident that happens in the twinkling of an eye that exposes the damage done over the previous 20 years.

Implementing a Zero Tolerance program in your organisation will not only improve the musculo-skeletal health of your staff but save you a lot of time, angst and money.