Why Pre-hire Physical Abilities Testing
Is Critical For the Warehouse Industry
ErgoScience uses industry-leading Physical Abilities Testing – designed to make your workplace safer
Regardless of whether it’s a private or public warehouse, a distribution center, a cold storage facility or an e-commerce fulfillment center and regardless of the types of goods housed within the facility, one thing all of these organizations have in common is that they have a lot of injuries.
Prevalence of injuries in warehousing. According to BLS statistics, in 2016, there were 5.1 non-fatal recordable injuries and illnesses for every 100 warehouse employees compared to 3.2 per 100 employees for all other industries (a 69% increase). The warehouse injuries that involved lost or restricted workdays was 3.7 per 100 full-time employees compared to the average of 1.7 per 100 full-time employees for all other industries (more than double the lost or restricted work days).
Nature of the Work
These statistics are not surprising when you consider the nature of the work – lots of materials handling (lifting, carrying, pushing, pulling), lots of reaching into overhead racks and bending down to reach into low racking, fast-paced and repetitive work with employees often compensated based on speed or pick rate, with the work sometimes being conducted on slippery surfaces, or climbing on and off equipment. The resulting injuries include low back and neck strains and sprains, torn rotator cuffs, slips, trips and falls and tendonitis of the hand, wrist and elbow. The list goes on…
Effect on KPIs: And with the average strain/sprain or slip/trip/fall costing $40K in direct costs alone, the work comp costs go on and on as well. And beyond the direct medical and indemnity costs, how do these injuries affect your organizations KPIs? When you have to hire temporary replacement workers or ask current employees to put in over time, what does that do to:
- Receiving productivity and cycle time?
- Putaway productivity and cycle time?
- Picking productivity and cycle time?
- Order lead time?
- Accuracy of receiving, putaway and picking?
ErgoScience has the proof. As an expert in testing for the warehousing and distribution industry, ErgoScience has data that proves what we do works. Take a look at the following example.
- This client in the automotive parts distribution warehousing business came to us for testing in 2007 and gradually rolled out testing across all locations by 2008.
- They have experienced an 89% decrease in the annual average number of injuries sustained, going from a 10-year average of 53 injuries per year to an average of a mere 6 injuries per year!
- And they saved an average of 90% on their work comp costs!
And they saved an average of 90% on their work comp costs!
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