By Delia Roberts

The field of workplace health and safety is rapidly evolving on several fronts.

Safety has long been a focus of HR professionals, upon whose shoulders often falls the responsibility of administering safety programs, as well as managing incidents when they do happen. In addition, over the past 10 years or so, workplace health and wellness programs have become more popular as the positive impact of good health on absenteeism, turnover, and productivity has been recognized.

Challenges of Sustainable Safety Programs
However, in spite of good intentions, many of the programs that are launched do not engage workers or produce sustainable improvements in health, or in safety. Without added time and resources, it becomes impossible for an HR officer to provide the necessary support for a program in the long term.

In spite of these challenges there are programs that have changed the culture of traditionally high-risk workforces—by reducing injuries have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation and insurance premiums, while significantly improving the quality of life for workers, as well as their families. In fact, companies with effective health and wellness programs are often rated the highest in terms of profitability as well as desirable places to work¹.

Fit to Plant a Safety Success
Imagine being able to recruit and retain the best people because your organization is considered to be leading the industry in providing a healthy workplace. One such health and wellness program began in the west Kootenays, at Selkirk College, and is still recognized internationally as an exceptionally effective intervention.

Fit to Plant² was based on evidence-based research^3-6 and follows a sport science model. It uses a culturally specific approach to reach the young men and women (and some older men and women) that spend their summers in this extremely physically demanding occupation. The solutions are simple, straightforward, and integrate the employer, the camp environment and the per-piece remuneration to motivate planters to look after their physiological needs.

Since launching the program injuries in tree planters in the companies that use Fit to Plant have dropped from above 20 per cent to three consecutive seasons with zero recordable incidents—a remarkable achievement for this industry⁷.

Get Fit to Work: Mind and Body
The Fit to Work series now includes programs for truck drivers and equipment operators (Power Driving⁸), wood harvesting operations (Fit to Log⁹) and the ski industry (Fit to Ski¹⁰). They all use the same research based, culturally and contextually specific approach to encourage workers to correct targeted factors that lead to increased injury rates and impaired health and wellness. The integration of health and safety is an extremely effective approach for increasing positive behavioral change, consistently reducing injury rates by approximately 70 per cent.

Implementing such a program does require specific resources, and as the HR officer, it is likely your desk it will land on. However, without a background in health and wellness, how can you determine which program will be a worthwhile investment for your organization, and how can you guide such a program to achieve sustainability?

To further the incorporation of these kinds of programs into existing health and safety efforts, Selkirk College is offering a new fully on-line program¹¹ in integrated health and safety. It offers information on how to evaluate a population of workers for the purpose of identifying functional deficits that increase the risk of injury, how to choose between existing resources, and how to tailor available resources to a specific cohort. Created for full-time HR and occupational safety professionals, the course provides a balance between enough background information that the targeted factors can be understood, and enough practical information to be effective in the limited time available.

Worksite health and wellness is good for employees and for organizations. Help yours reach new levels of productivity while becoming a more desirable place to work. For more information contact Selkirk College.

1. Sun Life Towers-Buffet National Wellness Survey 2013. http://www.towerswatson.com/DownloadMedia.aspx?media=%7BABC13DBD-4B68-49A1-B77C-662FFED1F6CE%7D
2. Fit to Plant http://www.selkirk.ca/treeplanting
3. Roberts, D. “In-season physiological and biochemical status of reforestation workers.” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 44: 559-567, 2002.
4. Roberts, D.  “Exceptionally High Plasma Cortisols and IL-6 Levels In Reforestation Workers.” Med Sci Sport Ex (abstract) 36:S220, 2004.
5. Roberts, D.  “Efficacy of Carbohydrate Feeding on Occupational Injury Rate and Productivity in Reforestation Workers in Energy Deficit.” Med Sci Sport Ex. 40(5) Supplement 1:S160 (abstract), 2008.
6. Roberts, D. “Chapter 35. The Occupational Athlete: Injury Reduction and Productivity Enhancement in Reforestation Workers.” In: ACSM’S Worksite Health Handbook A Guide to Building Healthy Companies. 2nd Ed. N. P. Pronk, Ed. Human Kinetics, Cha. 35. Pp.309-316, 2009.
7. Betts, John.  “Fit to Plant.” Forestry Journal, London UK. 12/13:20-21, 2014.
8. Roberts, D. “Chapter 23. The Occupational Athlete; Integrated Injury Prevention, Health and Wellness for Truck Drivers.” In: Implementing Physical Activity Strategies. National Physical Activity Plan, Human Kinetics, Inc., Champaign, Il, pp 193-201, 2014.
9. Roberts, D and Donnelly, S.  “Fluid Balance and Sweat Rates During Manual Timber Harvesting.” Med Sci Sport Ex (abstract), Vol 38:S173 Denver, 2006.
10. Roberts, D. “Injury Prevention for Ski-area Employees: A Physiological Assessment of Lift Operators, Instructors and Patrollers”. BMI Res. http://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2013/121832/iwhs
11. http://selkirk.ca/program/integrated-worksite-health-safety