Are you managing your own health?
Now, the COR audit comes at your health and safety from one perspective, asking questions like:
- Does the company have a MSD Prevention Program in place measuring and analyzing MSD duties with risk factors?
- Does the material handling policy outline safe work procedures and best practices for material handling?
These questions are aimed at the employer and directly and/or indirectly affect employees’ health.
What if we look at your health from the other side? Your side. Only you manage you. Others can tell you what you should or shouldn’t do, and can give excellent guidance, but only you can motivate and engage you.
Ponder this scenario:
You were at work getting out of your truck cab and you were in a hurry. You don’ need no stinkin’ three point contact. You swing out and take one big step down. And … splat. Knee drop stop, right on the pavement. Yow! Your knee is hurting in seven shades of green and you can’t move it .
Eventually you get to the specialist. They check the x-rays and gently move your knee through some range of motion. Surgery they say. Fractured tibia head, torn cartilage, and MCL ligament damage. The fracture will heal but you need surgery to smooth the cartilage and get the ligament tightened back up.
You go on a wait list with some priority. Knees need immediate treatment. After some days or weeks you get surgery on the knee and it is good. Everything gets tightened up and made as good as it can be. You get a nice permanent cast from hip to ankle. You go home and rest for a few days.
Now, your company has a top-shelf safety and RTW program. They have been in contact with you and your doctor and WorkSafeBC all throughout this ordeal. They have a RTW plan in place and have some light duty work planned for you around the office and shop. You are on crutches, but chairs and stools exist, and you can use one. You can do light duty work within your range of motion and abilities. You only work part time though, your knee can only take so much each day. This is part of your Graduated Return to Work Plan.
Three months later, the cast comes off. Your leg is weak and your skin looks a bit funny, but you can now move your knee. Yay! It hurts but moves under your direction. You’re still on crutches.
You start going to physiotherapy. Building strength and range of motion and stretching that thing out. Everything they want you to do seems to hurt. You continue for months. But it gets better, the pain decreases along the way, and eventually you regain 95% of your original range of motion and strength.
You go back to your regular duties with the company.
Ok. Let’s look closer at that situation. Specifically from your standpoint.
The snap decision to ignore company safe work procedures and forgo three point contact while
exiting your truck was the opposite of good planning. The company trained everyone on three point contact, there are also stickers on your truck right beside the door, reminding you. But, you were bustin’ a move to git r’ done. Consequences were severe for you. The company less so.
You broke your knee and blew out ligaments and cartilage. That’s permanent for you. You might regain most of your original range of motion and strength, but it is less common to regain all of it. That knee will never be as good ever again. Forever.
On top of that, there is often residual pain. Sometimes this goes away, sometimes it lasts forever, and sometimes it comes and goes. It could be severe or mild or just twinges at certain angles and loadings. This can affect the quality of your personal life. Maybe you used to play softball or biked or skied. Maybe you just liked going for a walk after dinner. Those activities might not be possible anymore, or may be seriously limited.
You may or may not be able to do your old job. In the scenario above it worked out ok. This doesn’t always happen. Sometimes employees have to change jobs within the company due to injury. Other times they need retraining to work in another industry/vocation to accommodate their injury. This could be good or bad. Often the employee is given little choice as to what their new job will be or what they will be retrained for. Sometimes you have to move to work the new job.
There are many other negatives that come out of being injured at work. My point here is to
make employees aware that even though there is a system in place to help them recover in case of injury, the employee is the one who is stuck with the disability, however minor or major that is.
When you are at work keep the thought ‘I am left with the disability’ in mind. The company won’t mind if you take an extra few seconds or minutes to do something. An injured employee isn’t on their to-do list. Injuries cost money, lower morale, and can be quite disruptive to operations if the injured employee was a key player on the team.
I’m not saying be a slacker or work unnecessarily slow. Just take the time and steps necessary to do the job safely. Everyone will benefit, especially you.
Reprinted from August 2015
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