Managing the risks to your employees

There are a lot of potential hazards your employees can encounter in the course of working for your business, from slippery floors and heavy lifting to undetectable chemicals and repetitive stress. To ensure that your employees remain healthy and productive, you need to be aware of these hazards and guard against them.


Risk management in this context means careful monitoring and attention to detail by management, supervisors and workers. Special measures can then be taken to reduce and even eliminate workers' compensation risk.

Hiring an ergonomist to evaluate any manual processes in your business can pay off by lowering the possibility of injury as well as by increasing the efficiency of the operation. Often, ergonomics programs focus on:

  • Job redesign
  • Reduction of loads
  • Getting things off the floor
  • Improving workstations
  • Job rotation
  • New equipment
  • Automation
  • Encouraging employees to move and stretch to relieve tired muscles

Of course, risk management does not always mean risk elimination - workplace injuries can and will still happen. When a worker is injured:

Work with your medical provider to bring employees back to work as soon as possible.
  • Identify alternate or modified work to accommodate the injury while it is healing.
  • Maintain communications with the injured worker so he or she can continue to identify with the workplace.
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