After being involved with numerous degenerative disease claims, a business can be held unfairly liable for such claims. The workers compensation system, processes and insurers often hold the employer liable for the full claims costs.
At ABILITY GROUP we advocate for clients and partners in securing the best possible outcome for their business and injured workers. In our experience businesses are often wrongfully held liable for the actions and decisions made by an individual during the years prior to being employed by the current business. Regrettably if proactive or preventative actions are not adopted by businesses, then the ability to have such degenerative disease related claims declined becomes extremely difficult.
Degenerative Disease – A Business Burden – As we promote with all workers compensation claims, early engagement is critical to minimising claims costs and to accelerate the return to work of injured employees. ABILITY GROUP also recommend the use of pre-employment assessments as part of the recruitment process to enable the effective evaluation of all candidates to assess their ability to fullfil the requirements of the roles.
In a 2011 Media Release by the Australian Heart Foundation the quoted research that indicated that too much sitting increases your risk of developing heart disease by 50%. The article goes on to state “Some people sit for up to 16 hours a day – as much as 70-85 hours a week! Over the last 10 years, we’ve studied the impact that too much sitting has on the body in terms of developing heart disease, type 2 diabetes and a string of other ailments. And the results are as compelling as they are alarming.”
This is further exacerbated by an ageing workforce as well as the obesity issues faced in Australia.
Radical designs for new offices that remove chairs and encourage employees to stand whilst using computers are some steps outlined in the article by Sourceable and indeed we have a partner that insists on standing whilst working at his desk.
For further information, please refer to the following articles:
Source: Sourceable
Title: Is A Sedentary Workplace Killing Us?
Read Time: 2 Minutes
Source: Australian Heart Foundation
Title: Sitting Down is Killing Us?
Read Time: 2 Minutes
Source: Insult and Injury (Commentary from Tasmanian Occupational Physician, Dr Peter Sharman on the redesign of workers’ compensation systems to improve health outcomes)
Title: Degenerative Disease – too heavy a burden on our compensation systems?
Read Time: 4 Minutes