A Message from TIPS General Manager: What is Your Bottom Line? How can TIPS reduce costs for your company?

This month I wanted to talk about Return on Investment. For many businesses, their employees are their biggest “investment.” So, in addition to considering how much it costs to employ them (wages, benefits, taxes), you need to consider the training, medical, legal and administrative costs for each employee as part of the investment. As businesses become more lean, either by design or economics, it is important to recognize that each employee is now responsible for a larger share of return. This creates an environment where the employee is often more stressed physically and mentally, as well as emotionally. This may mean that each employee’s performance is now more critical, but also each employee may be at a higher risk for absenteeism, injury, and reduced performance - essentially increasing the costs and reducing your returns.

For most business owners and managers facing tough economic times and reduced budgets, costs related to prevention are often put on hold - especially if there are no current measurable threats. However, it is prudent to look at your injury history as it relates to workload, too much or too little, and how it affects absenteeism, injuries and costs. If your company history shows that costs go up when there are increases to work loads, overtime, or a reduction in work loads or lost jobs, it is important to take the percent of cost increases into the equation when your budget is determined. When looking at the whole picture, it makes sense to consider options that can provide outlets and resources for improving the well-being of your employees, your greatest investments, sooner rather than later. From a strictly financial standpoint this can be a wise move on many levels:

Employee Injury Reductions and associated costs: decreased production, legal, medical, increased insurance, training.

Demonstrated value of the employee to the company.

Reduced absenteeism.

Critical areas of production maintained.

Our return on investment averages between 3 and 7 dollars for every dollar spent. And while that return does not begin immediately, if your company has a high number of soft tissue injuries, sprains, strains, repetitive injuries, or overexertion injuries, you are likely to start seeing a return within the first 6 months. As the changing economy creates challenges for many of you, TIPS has tried to come up with options that can provide cost effective solutions to your company’s ROI issues. Our on-site services are very adaptive at meeting the challenges that companies face. We have developed a line of Soft Tissue Injury Prevention DVD’s, and we also offer “Train the Trainer” courses that let you bring us into your company to help your employees.