Workplace Stretching Program
Implementing a workplace stretching program with your employees can help to minimise and prevent muscle injuries and strains occurring in the in the workplace. Advantage Injury Management Services can assist you to design a relevant and specific workplace stretching program that will ensure your employees are warmed up and prepared to embark on the physical tasks of their daily work tasks.
What does a workplace stretching program involve?
- To ensure a workplace stretching program is effective, it is essential that it be tailored to meet the physical demands of work roles. Therefore, it is highly recommended that a thorough musculoskeletal risk assessment of all work tasks be completed by our exercise physiologist in the first instance.
- Our accredited exercise physiologists will design a workplace stretching program or number of programs that will effectively prepare your staff for their daily work tasks. Where roles vary greatly within a company, and number of different programs may be required. In our experience, there is often little benefit from implementing a “one size fits all” type stretching program.
- Communication and implementation of the program is essential to it’s success. We encourage all management, front line managers and employees to participate in a practical demonstration of the workplace stretching program on site. Advantage Injury Management Services is happy to provide this training to assist ensure each stretch is demonstrated, and the correct technique emphasized. To ensure employees implement the program in the short and long term, it is strongly encouraged that management are seen to be practicing and implementing the program as well.
- Advantage Injury Management Services is also happy to assist with documentation of the program through handouts and posters.
What are the benefits of implementing a workplace stretching program?
There are a number of benefits associated with implementation of a workplace stretching program, including:
- Reduction in human and economic costs associated with injury and claims costs.
- Improved productivity due to reduced time off work due to injury and illness.
- Increased moral and your safety culture in the workplace.
- Employees who experience difficulties completing the workplace stretching program may be identified as a risk of injury. Therefore appropriate treatment and/or preventative measures (such as medical review, functional capacity evaluation or exercise physiology program) can be implemented.
What industries will benefit from a workplace stretching program?
The simple answer is that ALL industries will benefit from implementing a workplace stretching program. Although more widely accepted in manufacturing and process employment roles, great benefit can be gained from roles including those that are sedentary (such as office work and transport), requiring occasional manual handling such as retail, and to those with heavy or repetitive physical demands such as aged care, construction and manufacturing.