Group Captives Help Companies Address Often Overlooked Exposures

Editor's Note: This article is contributed by Captive Resources, LLC. It examines how group captive insurance companies tackle overlooked ergonomic risks, enhancing workplace safety through education and holistic approaches.

Group captive insurance companies are known for offering member companies foundational support resources for continuous risk control improvement. This article will focus on ergonomic risk, part of a larger category of topics that broaden the scope of risk control and help member companies achieve exceptional safety.

Member Education Approaches Risk Control from Many Angles

The term "workplace risk" tends to elicit thoughts of common accidents such as slips, trips, and falls; vehicular crashes; and contact with equipment. Education addresses these types of risks with themes such as driving safety and construction hazard mitigation. Though vital, accident prevention is only one of several areas of risk control. For companies to achieve a well-rounded program, it's essential to approach risk control from numerous angles, including the following.

• Operationalizing safety protocols
• Managing regulatory and legal issues
• Building a safety culture

An additional risk control category focuses on critical, yet often neglected, risk exposures that develop over the long term. An example of this type of risk is ergonomics. While not always considered a core component of risk control, poor ergonomics in the workplace can engender several serious risk factors over time.

Ergonomics Focus Addresses an Oft-Overlooked Risk

Perhaps the most notable ergonomic risk is musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), which are the most common type of workplace injury and cost US businesses nearly $17 billion per year, according to the National Safety Council. Despite an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) emphasis on ergonomic risk mitigation in the past 30 years, many MSDs tend to escape employers' notice because they develop gradually.

Because this type of risk is so pervasive and potentially costly, a group captive risk control curriculum should include extensive ergonomic-themed educational and training opportunities. From a tactical standpoint, ergonomic education gives member companies actionable ideas to incorporate in their risk control programs. From a cultural perspective, education in this category helps companies foster a work environment that takes a holistic approach to employee health and wellness and elevate their risk control programs from solid to exceptional.

The following are some examples of strategies that various experts have presented to help group captive members address ergonomic risk.

Reducing Mental Health-Driven Ergonomic Risks

Soft-tissue occupational injuries have dramatically increased along with the root causes of chronic pain—mental health challenges and work-life unbalance—in the past few years. At $45 billion to $54 billion, the indirect costs of MSDs (e.g., lost productivity, absenteeism, and chronic pain) far outweigh the direct costs of $20 billion.

Captive Resources recently hosted an educational session that provided several ways member companies can address this trend. Strategies included rethinking injury prevention with a more holistic environmental, health, and safety (EHS) emphasis and adopting the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Total Worker Health (TWH) program.

Using a Sports Medicine Approach To Improve Ergonomic Work Fitness

Reducing MSDs is a critical objective for employers—while the estimated direct cost of a typical strain injury is more than $32,000, the typical indirect cost is more than $67,000. Employers can adopt a sports medicine mindset to transition their programs from disease care to healthcare for better injury prevention.

According to one expert, employers should incorporate sports medicine model concepts into an "occupational athlete model," using several proven tactics to make the transition. Employers can ergonomically prepare employees using methods such as work conditioning and human performance coaching, which resemble athletic trainers' methods for keeping athletes injury-free.

Preventing Ergonomic Injuries with Early Symptom Intervention

The US healthcare system and many companies are ill-equipped to facilitate early ergonomic injury intervention, which is critical to prevention. According to one expert, there are several strategies that group captive member companies can use to incorporate early intervention into their operations, including the following.

• Company stakeholders must agree on key performance indicators
• Training and wellness programs must address overall workforce health and different job roles and micro-cultures
• Employers should involve healthcare providers, who can proactively assess workforce needs, in their programs

New Risk Control Perspectives Are a Key Membership Consideration

Risk control is a continuous improvement endeavor. Outside perspectives are valuable for mitigating workplace risk in its many forms—particularly exposures that are hard to detect, such as ergonomic risk. Support resources can enable companies to maintain cost-effective risk control and keep their workers healthy and productive.