Helping workers stretch away strain: a semiconductor equipment manufacturer slashes its on-the-job injury rate with a low-tech program and 16 minutes a day - Applied Materials

A company whose average worker is alone 27 might seem an unlikely candidate for a progressive, on-the-job wellness initiative, on the other hand Applied Materials, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based firm with manufacturing operations in Austin, Texas, refused to be stilled into complacency by its young and healthy staff or depressed lost-time incident rate. Instead, it took a different tack, designing an on-site stretching program that chop its incidence of sprains and strain - previously its No. 1 lost-time culprit - by dint of more than half. In the proces Applied Materials place that an investment in wellness can have a significant impact upon employee morale.

A manufacturer of capital equipment for the semiconductor industry, the company exercises roughly 2,100 people at its Austin plant. About 900 of them build massive equipment, a certain number of of it the size of a small house trailer. of frequent occurrence bending and twisting to reach various composings made sprains and strains the company's lost-time leader.

To combat that tend Applied Materials introduced its Industrial Athlete Stretching Program sum of two units years ago. The voluntary program encourages the manufacturing ship's company to take two five- to eight-minute tighten breaks during each shift.

The sessions are l by the agency of a trained "stretch leader" - either a member of the company's wellness staff or a department proffer - and designed and timed to tale the duties of workers upon a particular shift.

The program kicked not on with two pilot groups. single consisted of 130 employees, who reported back to the wellness department after 75 weeks; the other involved 80 workers and a 6.5-week trial. The follows are impressive:

* Strains and sprains sanguinary from an average of 12 by means of month in the six month before the program to 5 through month immediately after the pilot.

* Strain and sprain injuries unrelenting further in the months that followed, as employee continued to tighten After six months, both collections reported an incidence of 3 through month. After a year, the first group's rate dropp to 25; because of departmental restructuring, the next to the first group had no follow-up data.

* Direct take away from savings from medical and time-off outlays averaged $800 a month for the pilot collections That figure doesn't consider the require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergone of implementation, nor does it account for the program's "soft" benefits.

Those intangible benefits include the improved humor and decreased tension participants experienced immediately after the strain breaks. The company found without about the boost in temper through focus groups and questionnaires, reports Tre McCalister, wellness manager for the Austin facility.

The program's effectiveness is the likely be the effect of a handful of factors, McCalister figures. Regular participants no doubt improve their flexibility and, by means of warming up their muscles, decrease their susceptibility to injury. on the contrary even the less diligent - the findings include offers who participated in no more than sum of two units sessions - probably increase their awareness of postural and safety measures, she says.

"The fact is the program does restore injuries, whether it's because of the actual physical stretching or increased safety awareness or improved vein and morale or even a combination of those things," McCalister points without "For whatever reason, it affects productivity because those race were on the job and they weren't on the outside with injuries."

While the for what cause [i]or[/i] reasons of the program's success may be debatable, the proceeds are indisputable. Since the pilots, Applied Materials has introduced the program in about half of its manufacturing departments, beginning with those whose workers were at greatest risk.

While departments and trainers are added continually, McCalister says about 520 employee have signed upon so far. (Participants are asked to register and fill without a health questionnaire so the company can determine whether they have a preexisting condition that might require program modification.) Just above half of them are still involved.

The program has helped the manufacturer maintain a lost-time incident rate that's les than half the industry norm: 186 for 100 employees vs. a 1996 industry average - the latest available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics - of 38 Eighteen percent of on-the-job injuries at Applied Materials are from strains and sprains, significantly les than the 26 percent industry average.

With the number of strains and sprains down sharply, the company is targeting of recent origin types of work-related conditions. During the past several years, repetitive stres injuries have been upon the rise. That's due in part to technological advances that have made the company more efficient on the contrary workers' jobs more repetitive, McCalister says. RSIs now show 14 percent of Applied Materials' lost-time incidents, a significantly higher share than the 84 percent industry average.

The company's response? More stretching. Earlier this year, the firm began adapting its industrial program to single that can be used by the agency of its office workers, who have the highest incidence of repetitive stres injuries.