Pulse Legacy Archive March / April 2011 | Seite 22

voices

Risk Management:
Protecting Your Treatment
Staff from Injury
LAURIANN GREENE, CEAS &
RICHARD W. GOGGINS,
CPE, LMP
Lauriann Greene, CEAS,
and Richard W. Goggins,
CPE, LMP, are co-authors
of Save Your Hands! The
Complete Guide to Injury
Prevention and Ergonomics
for Manual Therapists, 2nd
Edition, the leading selfcare textbook for these
professionals. Lauriann is
a Certified Ergonomics
Assessment Specialist,
and Richard
is a Board Certified Professional
Ergonomist with nearly 20 years’
experience; both are trained
massage therapists. They work with
spas like Glen Ivy and The Spa at
Sea Island to reduce injury among
treatment staff, and offer the
Certified Injury Prevention Instructor
(CIPI) program to provide spas with
on-site trainers. For more information, visit saveyourhands.com.

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our treatment staff—including massage therapists and estheticians—are
arguably your company’s most valuable asset. They have the most contact
with your clients, and their performance is often the deciding factor on
whether clients continue to visit your spa. Your spa has invested a considerable amount of money to recruit and train them.
Once you’ve found great treatment professionals, you need to protect your investment
and retain them as long as possible. However, the physically demanding work they do
every day puts them at risk for injury (see sidebars on page 22).

STAFF INJURY IS COSTLY FOR YOUR SPA
Pain and discomfort erode productivity, may cause lost work days and turnover increase
as workers take time off work to heal or even have to completely stop working due to
injury. Discomfort and injury among workers can quickly degrade morale.
In addition to these direct costs, symptoms and injury also affect the client experience.
It is difficult to ensure a consistent, quality experience for clients with high rates of absenteeism and turnover. Uncomfortable, disgruntled treatment providers hardly project
well-being to spa guests.
INVEST IN PREVENTION WITH ERGONOMICS
Prevention is the key to protecting valuable treatment staff. Ergonomics, the science of
fitting the workplace to the worker, offers proven prevention methods that are cost-effective and easy to implement.
Comprehensive ergonomics programs have been shown to reduce workers’ compensation claims by as much as 70 percent, reduce lost work days by 75 percent, and increase
productivity by 20 percent.1
Since multiple factors are involved in causing injury, a successful prevention strategy
must be comprehensive, combining a number of tactics to address