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Labor-Management Relations and Workers' Comp

Over the last 17 years we have had the privilege of working with hundreds of thousands of employees across the U.S. & Canada to help prevent costly and painful back and other sprain/strain injuries. It is fascinating to experience the diverse and numerous jobs that people perform every day across North America.

It is also interesting to witness management/labor relations within our client organizations. Morale is an important dynamic of any organization or group. It can affect production, profitability, turnover, talent acquisition, and the personal happiness of each and every person in the organization.

It is always refreshing for us to walk into an organization where labor and management get along well and trust each other. I must also comment that it is not as common as we would like to think, and some might even consider it rare.

 
We have often perceived barriers between employees and management that were significant enough to make us question how any constructive work could get done. These barriers are often accompanied by a type of pervading negative energy that at times is palpable.

Have you ever been alone in an elevator when someone else gets on? Did you both then just stare up at the changing floor numbers in silence?

We seem to be able to make a "field" around us at times to create space between strangers and ourselves. We use that same "skill" to create another type of energy that lets people know we are upset with them. Some husbands have called it the deadly "silent treatment." However, silence can be endured. It is the unspoken, almost electrically charged energy that tacitly communicates "uh-oh, it might be safer being in another zip code right now," that is the "deadly" component.

 
Now take tens, hundreds, or thousands of employees that work in the same place. They collectively will form a sort of group personality and this same communication phenomenon applies.

Do these employees share a collective mindset toward management that negatively affects their communication with management? By the same token, does management, as a group, share a similar mindset that creates underlying communication barriers between them and employees?

Not so coincidentally we find that when significant issues exist between management and labor, Workers' Comp costs seem to be higher.

We went into one very large company and boy, oh boy was that atmosphere virulent! We were hired to train several thousand employees on how to prevent back and shoulder injuries. The costs of these injuries and the loss time were significantly impacting profit and production.

 
In this particular case, during the pre-assessment, we discovered that we had our hands full due to the level of disharmony between these employees and the management team. The mutual distrust was significant.

When we began doing our on-site pre-assessment we of course were looked upon as an extension of management. We felt as wanted as a Dean at the Friday night frat party.

We can predict that any training done with a negative energy barrier in the way will not result in a significant change in employees' behavior and thus no significant Workers' Comp savings would result. This is precisely why we have spent considerable research over the years into how to eliminate this barrier between us and the employees.

 
Developing our Backsafe® and Sittingsafe® program was a task of combining the sciences of anatomy, biomechanics, ergonomics, stretching, and kinesiology, etcetera, with the art of communicating!!

Without our ability to penetrate communication barriers that may exist between labor and management, our results would be the same as any other failed attempt to prevent costly back strains and sprains. However, we have come to know how to break through these barriers to get employees to accept the Backsafe® and Sittingsafe® principles as valuable and to apply them at work and at home.

Embedding injury prevention principles through employees into a corporate culture takes more than downloading "facts" and ergonomic "do's and don'ts" from the internet. It takes the medium of artful communication to cut through the labor-management barriers, the education and language barriers, and to get the employees to willfully bring their minds and their bodies to the training.

If sprain/strain injuries represent more than 30% of your Workers' Comp losses you now have a solution. Today's economy no longer permits public entities or corporations to be passive about Workers' Comp. You now must prevent expensive claims before you end up paying for them. The great news is that when you stop back injuries and other sprains/strains the return on investment is often in the "windfall" category.

Look back at your losses over the last 3 years. If that report is dotted with expensive sprain/strains, if you have had trouble preventing workplace injuries in the past, call me. We just may enhance your employee morale at the same time we eliminate these Workers' Comp claims.

I look forward to speaking with you.

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