Safety Knights

Reach out to the Movement Ninja on this! Lori Frederick (link below) is the guru on this topic and can help with answering these questions.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorifrederic/

Oh yes! My plant was the model for stretching for our entire Corporation of 300 locations in North America. We had an Extensive Lean Program (and still do) and as one of those requirements were several task assigned safety teams, which one was required to be an Ergo Team! It was 2003. We kicked off our Ergo Team along with several others like Lockout and Haz Com, with extensive training . In Ergo we were given an national Ergo Firm Humantech, and were able to have a local firm made up of PTs, OTs, and DOs. The consultants came in and suggested two things off the bat they called Low Hanging Fruit. First was Job Rotation were we could, especially in our Assembly Cells. The second was stretching, pre-shift, during shift, and even post-shift.

I remember well being in a Teleconference with our Plant Management Staff, Corporate EHS, Risk, and Group Ops and HR. The subject was stretching. Presentations were made by the PTs and DOs and everyone loved the concept of selling the employees in the idea of being "Industrial Athletes." After all our plant is 30 miles from Lambeau Field. WE sold the idea to our employees, "What do the Packers do before a game? What should we do too as athletes?" Packers are like a religion here!

Ops was arguing that we should begin with just pre-shift stretching but the experts advised up to consider during and post as well. Ops won their case on that one!

Next we got into a huge discussion on making the stretching mandatory or voluntary. EHS and Risk warned us that if we made it mandatory any injuries were a result would probably be OSHA Recordables and for sure WC in almost every state. Most of HR and EHS, with the exception of me, bought into this stance. OPS, EHS, and myself felt it we made the program optional our culture was not ready for it, and it would fail! We were either going to be 100% committed to the program or we would not do it! if we took a recordable or two, the benefits outweighed the few recordables, if we really

Stretching is great, but it’s no substitute for a full ergonomic program. That would be my focus personally

I can't believe people still do this. I work in construction. I was never a fan. I saw it as a fad 20 years ago. It has it's value as a component to a full program if you get management support for that. I see more value in pre-hire medical evaluations for fitness by job description if you are in a general industry environment.

I have been with my present company for 3 1/2 years - we are a heavy structural concrete company and do Stretch and Flex on every jobsite that we have, every day. Most of our GCs require this also. We don't over do it with any P90X Yoga style stretches and I have not seen any injuries come from Stretch & Flex.

Prior to coming to work for this company, I was skeptical but I am now a fan. We try to make it fun with music playing on many of our sites.

With our processes, we do a ton of lifting and overhead work. We do not have a high rate of musculoskeletal injuries.

Just my two cents.