How Fitness to Work Assessments can help your business to operate safely

Fitness to Work Assessments

Fitness to work assessments are imperative for many industries to enable businesses to operate safely and in the best interests of their staff. Not only can they protect employees, but also employers too as there’s less chance of something critically dangerous going wrong.

They make sure that an individual is fit to perform their work tasks effectively without risk to their own safety or others. These assessments mean that employers can make the necessary adjustments to an employee's role, work, or equipment, so that they can work efficiently and most importantly, safely.

An employee may already have a health condition that could be made worse by work or certain aspects of their work, and a fitness for work assessment will highlight this, so that the correct and suitable adjustments can be made. Not only does it help the employee, but it also helps the business by having a good reputation when it comes to staff health and safety; this is very useful when it comes to employment.

UKIM’s Head of Occupational Health Operations, Angela Evans, shares why fitness to work assessments are important and beneficial…

“Ensuring that your employees are fit to work in a safety critical environment is crucial for your business. Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work regulations 1999, employers are required by law to protect employees, and others, from harm.

Fitness for work assessments help to ensure that your staff are fit for safety critical roles, reducing the risk of injuries and associated costly absences from work and claims, as well as helping your employees to feel supported and confident in their roles. Fitness for work assessments can complement existing health surveillance programmes to support health and safety in the workplace.

Examples of safety critical roles where fitness for work assessments would be beneficial include working in confined spaces, working at a height, forklift drivers, banksman, and construction workers, amongst others.”

Glenn Robertson, UKIM’s Head of Occupational Physiotherapy / Ergonomist, explains how his role in occupational health aids fitness to work…

“The musculoskeletal (MSK) side of things is dealing with health conditions and ergonomics when the workplace is looking at the causes of those conditions. MSK is assessment and treatment of the condition, and the ergonomics is actually the assessment of the workplace and the work area.

There’s a couple of ways we use ergonomics; one is looking at whether there is a link between what an individual does, and their condition. And the other is trying to assess processes, systems, and trying to get to the point of preventing problems from happening in the first place. So, if I assess a person and their condition could be linked to what they do, I have a look at things like force, repetition, posture and try to link it to their condition. I work with health and safety and engineering teams to ensure things are set up properly so that problems don’t happen and people don’t develop MSK or health problems.

This is a vital role when it comes to fitness to work as I help individuals find ways to be able to do their job, with their conditions, and it also plays a huge role in preventing any fitness to work issues.”