Location, location, location is a common real estate refrain. The same building in one location can be worth much more in a more desirable location.
In our twenty-four years of helping organizations with multiple sites, to reduce sprain/strain injuries, we know location has a lot to do with workers’ comp and even production–but for a much different reason. Sure, California, Texas and some other states may be more expensive than others but there is another factor affecting your costs and production as well.
It is leadership. Leadership by definition is all about managing people. Managing, in turn, connotes controlling something well. Good managers execute plans to a desired end.
Management’s job is to effectively control people, activities and things. Many people are excellent at controlling activities and things. However, managers that can also control people well are worth their weight in gold.
Now before you get the wrong impression, “controlling people” is not a bad thing. “Poor” control of people is a bad thing. Those that “control” people by dominating them, or squashing them, or getting their kicks out of bullying people give “control” a bad name.
Controlling people to, in turn, control quantity and quality of production, morale and safety is a good thing and a vital skill.
Controlling “things” is a cinch. “Things” don’t have opinions; they don’t like or dislike you; they don’t have good days or bad days. “Things” don’t have positive attitudes or have a desire to cause conflict every moment of their day.
People are the biggest challenge that management faces. Well trained people with good morale and who share the organization’s goals and purposes are the keystone to success.
Good leadership is really hard to find. Some people are natural at it, some “learn” how to lead and others, well, should never be asked to lead.
Leadership starts and begins with caring. If one doesn’t care about people in general, they will never be good leaders. Over the past twenty-four years we have provided “workplace injury prevention training” at many companies of various types and sizes. Our observations are that many organizations with high workers’ comp costs, sometimes have communication breakdowns between employees and management. When we hear things like “our claims are all fraudulent, employees have it too easy today or they are never going to LISTEN to what you have to say” we know as Injury Prevention Specialists that we can have a huge impact on claims. Not only does our curriculum work to change behavior, our training philosophy gets employees to LISTEN. Our goal is to help our customers spend significantly less on workers’ comp!!! However, our purpose is to help employees stay healthy on and off the job.
Trust, workers’ comp costs and production are very often related. FIT helps bridge communication gaps between labor and management and shows employees that THEY are truly valuable to the company. Why else would the company hire outside experts to come in to deliver customized injury prevention training to employees for work AND AT HOME?
What does this have to do with FIT’s Injury Prevention Programs? Our goal is to prevent all sprain/strain injuries. Our purpose is to help your employees to stay healthy on and off the job.
We teach people for the first time in their lives how they should be doing their jobs and at-home activities in ways that will help keep them healthy. They want this information badly, as pain and discomfort are great motivators.
Employees value this knowledge. They don’t get hurt nearly as often and they come to realize the company does care about them! Leadership is an art! Lead by caring about the employee. The Backsafe® and Sittingsafe® programs address your workers’ well-being 24/7. It is a cornerstone to establishing a better culture.
We want to work with you to help lower workers’ comp costs as we have done for countless other organizations. We are very good at it and very good at helping leadership show that employees are important to them on and off the job.
Prevent tomorrow’s injuries today!™
Dennis Downing,
President Future Industrial Technologies
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