There is a Chinese proverb that reads “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” This sage advice can apply to many things in our lives. Who doesn’t look in their life’s rearview mirror at times, with a clearer vision of what could have been done, that wasn’t?
For the last 27 years it has been
our mission to help companies to proactively stop costly and painful back, shoulder and other sprain/strain injuries
. Historically there was a common corporate cultural attitude of “we will out-produce” the costs and lost days from back injuries and hope they go away.
This “old school” model
was untenable over time as the direct and indirect costs of sprain/strain work related injuries increased. Also prevailing at that time was a mindset that many who claimed to be injured were “faking it” so they wouldn’t have to work to receive money.
Over the last decade we have noticed a
considerable shift in corporate America’s attitude towards preventing injuries
. Some of the initiative for this shift was:
- 2008 economic crash that was motivation to stop $40,000+ back claims which were no longer affordable
- a desire to improve employee retention to cut costs of employee turnover
- discovering the high return on investment (ROI) opportunities experienced by other organizations who were successfully preventing sprain/strain injuries (for example, FIT helped a major airline reduce back and neck injuries by 63% after training 20,000 employees)
