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Miller Health is a member of the
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MILLER HEALTH Pty Ltd is an integrated corporate health management company.
OUR AIM is to assist corporate organisations to increase workplace productivity by reducing the costs of absenteeism, presenteeism, workers compensation and staff turnover.
OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH, FITNESS AND WELLBEING
This page of our website contains some of the compelling reasons why it pays organisations to focus on the health and fitness of their employees.
Contrary to popular opinion it is not unsafe workplaces that are the major contributors to the current spate of absenteeism, presentism and worker's compensation claims; on the contrary, it is body system dysfunction caused in large part by motion starvation and lack of personal development - people get crook backs and stressed out of their brains!
We've reached the point in workplace history where the costs associated with poor health are exceeding the costs associated with poor safety. It's time to focus on the health side of the OH&S equation.
The reason for adding 'fitness' to 'health' is that in a sedentary culture it is a very big ask expecting to stay healthy without keeping oneself fit. The great advances in community health made in the first 80 years of the 20th Century are being eroded dramatically by a sedentary lifestyle.
The reason for adding the word 'wellbeing' is to further broaden the definition of 'health' to give it a psychological perspective.
DECLINING HEALTH STATUS It is a fact that the health status of the community is declining - the increase in medical expenditure confirms this. It's obvious; if people were becoming healthier, medical bills would be coming down.
Workplaces are being effected by this trend. At the same time as they have become safer, they've also become unhealthier. Poor health is now a significant driver of OH&S costs.
PERSONALLY-GENERATED BODY SYSTEM DYSFUNCTIONS When we talk about 'poor health', it becomes easier to grasp the concept when we define it as 'body system dysfunction'. Most of the diseases that plagued the country 100 years ago have disappeared. The current illhealth epidemic relates to personally-generated dysfunctions. It's a private health issue, not a public health issue.
These dysfunctions are driven principally by
The good news about this is that if personal lifestyle choice is the major cause of the problem, then personal lifestyle choice can be a major influence in the solution.
There are three principal categories of dysfunction, ▪ metabolic ▪ musculo-skeletal ▪ psychological.
These dysfunctions are recognised by their symptoms
HEALTH AND THE WORKPLACE So why should organisations take an interested in the personal health of their staff?
THE INVESTMENT VERSUS THE COST
Within the community generally there is confusion between the meaning of the word 'health' and the word 'medical'. The workers compensation and medical industries treat the two as though they were synonymous. But they're not.
The focus of 'health' is people being healthy - and it's a big ask expecting to be healthy without being fit. It's about doing something yourself to stimulate recuperative power, restoring poor health to good health by doing the things fit and healthy people do to keep themselves fit and healthy. It's a very big ask expecting to get better by having someone do something to you!
Regrettably the focus of medicine in this country has become the masking of symptoms, of doing things to people, rather than people doing things to themselves. It leads to expensive and drawn out treatments. No one ever became stronger or more flexible in a surgery or pharmacy, or on a massage table!
Money spent on medical treatment is a cost. Money spent on health is an investment.
By making a modest investment in health, fitness and wellbeing, the VWA can generate savings on absenteeism, presenteeism, workers compensation and staff turnover.
Developing a sharper focus on health, fitness and wellbeing stands to turn current OH&S thinking on it head. Currently every twinge, every palpitation, every disappointment is deemed to be work-related.
What a good OHFW program does is reduce the dysfunctions, and better manage the risk of them becoming attributable to the workplace - no smoke, no mirrors, just plain common-sense; healthy people - healthy workplace.
Organisations can make a choice - either to make a modest investment in encouraging people to keep themselves fit and healthy or face the high costs associated with presenteeism, absenteeism, workers compensation and staff turnover.
A WORD ABOUT WORKER'S COMPENSATION INSURANCE
The workers compensation insurance industry will not operate efficiently and organisations will be financially strapped until premiums are rated against the health and safety risk, of each individual as well as the organisation.
We've reached a crisis point in workers compensation, that point where we can no longer afford to hide unfit, unhealthy and at risk staff behind the workers compensation skirt. (The same situation is bedeviling the medical insurance system where it's illegal to rate premiums against risk.)
Ideally, premiums need to be split into two categories ▪ personal risk rating ▪ organisational risk rating.
Unless you can build into the workers compensation system a. a personal imperative for people to keep themselves fit and healthy, and b. an organisational imperative to keep people fit and healthy
ever increasing amounts of money will poured into the bottomless pit.
Whilst that's probably pie in the sky and unlikely to happen, it reinforces the point that there needs to be both personal and corporate accountability for health, fitness and wellbeing in any workplace. The risks have to be managed outside established compensation schemes. The great challenge is moving heaven and earth to keep people out of the compensation system
So, don't ask what your workers compensation insurer can do for you, ask what you can do for yourself.
Establish a health, fitness and wellbeing policy Establish a health, fitness and wellbeing focus within your organisation that's separate from safety. If you're a medium to large-sized organisation that means employing staff trained in the art of keep people fit and healthy, that can run prehab and rehab programs for people with the three major dysfunctions. Leaving it to the white coat professionals is an expensive business.
Programs It means running health programs for all staff.
If staff are not obligated to take part it makes a mockery of the organisation's commitment; plus those most in need - the workaholics, the self important and the unhealthy, are not likely to attend. The impact and the effect is marginalised.
A serious occupational health, fitness and wellbeing program elevates OHFW to the status of technical, management and career development within an organisation. It gives life, energy and vitality to the organisation.
Assessments It means making assessments to provide benchmarks in OHFW - for individual staff members and the organisation. Without measurement, neither the individual nor the organisation knows where they stand or whether the objectives of the program are being achieved.
Audits The assessments will provide you with health climate surveys and risk factor audits.
We've made assessments on thousands of people and we have a fair idea of the standards that can be met by normal, healthy people. However, any workplace can set standards to suit themselves, gradually increasing them as staff get fitter and healthier.
You'll very soon get a feel for the standards that are best practice for your organisation.
Certainly any standards achieved by any workgroup can be measured and compared with those achieved by other workgroups. This in itself will create a healthy interest in health development within organisations.
It means making a proper assessment of the cause of 'injuries'. I suspect that huge amounts of compensation money are being paid out to rehabilitate and compensate people whose underlying problem is that they are in poor physical condition. They don't have an injury, they're dysfunctional. Their dysfunction is not work-induced. They're not resilient.
The risk was never measured. The risk was never managed. The organisation cops it sweet!
Awards and rewards It means rewarding people who are in good shape and those on the way to better shape.
Key performance indicators It means creating key performance indicators against which manager's performance can be gauged. No organisation can tolerate high levels of absenteeism and workers compensation for long. These matters have to be managed at the lowest levels.
This means managers will need some training so they can comfortably accept this role.
WE'RE AT THE CROSSROADS
We've got an aging workforce.
A lot of employees are not in good shape.
The employee 'medical' is not sufficient.
There are a lot of selection procedures that are not tight enough. I know of one organisation that employed a bloke weighing 140Kg and 8 weeks later he slapped a claim form on the OH&S manager's table for DVT. The insurance company was happy to oblige - not their money!
If your legs jerks when the hammer hits your knee, and if you can fog up the mirror you'll pass most medical exams.
Then there's retention. In this labor market it's dog eat dog. If you don't have some good employee value propositions, sooner or later good people are going to accept a better offer - in a quarry for double the money and half the time.
One of the best things you can do for your staff is encourage them to keep themselves fit and healthy to the best of their ability. The increased energy and vitality will be infectious. It will even rub off onto your customers.
WHAT DO WE DO? We run programs, - health, fitness, diet, smoking cessation, stress management and career satisfaction.
We conduct assessments which provide the data to create Health Climate Surveys and Risk Factor Audits.
We make individual and organisational recommendations about how to improve employee health, fitness and wellbeing.
We provide individual, lifestyle counseling.
We send out our occasional corporate health and fitness email newsletter to corporate organizations. Click here to take a look at some of our corporate health newsletters.
We direct participants in our programs to Fit and Healthy Online.
We provide advice on the development of:
- policy - strategy - prehab and rehab classes - fitness centre establishment.
A FINAL WORD Poor health has become the principal driver of OH&S costs. A modern and comprehensive occupational health, fitness and wellness program confronts these issues head on.
Click on the key and unlock the door to the health, fitness and wellbeing blue print.
Blue I've chosen the colour blue because what you're about to see is the blue print for establishing a successful occupational health, fitness and wellbeing policy framework. to represent the vitality, energy and creativity behind the program behind the door.
According to Edward DeBono, the Green Hat symbolizes 'adapting and changing to make more successful; synthesizing and inventing'. (Based on the long history of occupational health and safety, a new emphasis on health, fitness and wellbeing will certainly require a lot of synthesizing and inventing.)
In the meantime stay tuned, highly tuned and remember, you can't solve a 21st Century health problem with a 20th Century safety solution.
John Miller Managing Director Miller Health Pty Ltd
It's a big ask expecting to stay healthy without keeping yourself fit.
It's an even bigger ask expecting to get better by having someone do something to you; sooner or later you have to do something to yourself.
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