10 Ways Field Prioritizes Employee Health
1. Healthy technique – lifting, raking and shoveling have a right way to do it.
2. Don’t be a hero – work as a team.
3. Company commitment to magic of hydraulics – lifting and moving done with a machine whenever possible.
4. We are athletes – we have a trainer – we hired Von Gillette 4 years ago to teach body mechanics, develop daily strengthening routines and work with individual on personal assessment and injury recovery.
5. Work a normal week – we keep our work week to just over 40 hours.
6. Body-saving technology – stay up to date on body-saving technologies. Now its vacuum lifters – we have them as a two person lifter and as a machine attachment for lifting larger scale paving, steps etc.. in the future will it be exoskeletons…. https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/
7. Daily required strengthening routines – we do 10 minutes of required exercise every morning – reinforcing the importance of health, working on core strength, back, hip and shoulder positioning and motion.
8. Individual Assessments and Injury Recovery – Our trainer, Von Gillette, works with employees to assess and inventory individual body issues, characteristics and ranges of motion. Use-injuries are predictable based on individual body issues and we can work on them before they occur.
9. Acknowledge types of work that are harder on the body. For us, flagstone is one of the hardest. Raking is really hard. Work to reduce the amount of time (or quit entirely) we do those activities. Rotate crews doing those jobs. Large scale pavers with a vacuum lifter can be easy peasy.
10. Hire only individuals committed to personal management of their health and who believe that the movements and physical exertion of landscaping can make you healthier not beat your body to a pulp.
