Everyone talks about "thinking outside the box". Windham Group actually does. Our ergonomic product offerings are an innovative approach to controlling your costs both pre and post injury. Windham Group is the only company in New England to offer you this level of expertise through our board certified Ergonomists.

Ergovention the Most Valuable Tool in the Claims Shed

Ergovention™; is Windham's proprietary process designed to identify and modify the work activities that cause soft tissue/repetitive trauma injuries. It might sound simple but our success has been predicated on shifting the treatment focus from the doctor's office back to the workplace. In over 3000 lost time interventions, we have successfully obtained work releases to the injured workers original position 77% of the time and these work releases came from their treating physician.

This profile of how an Ergovention works draws upon a sample of carefully documented interventions. Typically, claims adjusters prompt an Ergovention to speed up return to work. At the time of the referral, we determined that almost half were held up by the employer's perception that return to work is not feasible. A large minority cannot move forward due to reluctance of the treating physician to approve return to work based on an injured workers subjective complaints.Windham Group, on average, identifies five factors at the worksite, which have contributed to the injury. These include classic ergonomic problems such as poor work posture, force and repetition. On average 1/2 of the contributing factors are verifiable only by a site visit! These include poor techniques which the worker has acquired over time, they also include shifts, production surges and other changes (planned or unplanned) in physical and mental demands.

Solutions with little or no additional cost

Windham Group, during the visit, articulates a plan to remove barriers and bring the worker back safely. In virtually all instances, this involves a modification, permanent or temporary to some aspect of the worker's job. Contrary to conventional expectations, the vast majority of these changes involve no or little financial outlay by the employer.

The specialist is trained to discover the most effective solution - quite often the easiest to implement. The specialist's trained capacity to find the most effective solution speeds up claim closure the vast majority of the time, and usually uncovers how to make the worker more productive. In about 50% of Ergoventions, the solution offered, documented and accepted by the employer allows the worker to be more productive than she or he was pre-injury.

Productivity improvement, across the workforce

The full value of an Ergovention reveals itself by the ways in which the cost of a single site visit pays for multiple solutions. Worksites typically have several active claims and the Ergovention, while formally focused on one referred claim, often addresses, at no extra charge, exposures that exist at multiple worksites that are similar in nature. We call this 'replication' and we've determined that for every Ergovention we perform there are 4.3 other jobs that benefit from 'replication'.

Cost

In post injury interventions, the cost of an Ergovention is applied to the claim as an Indemnity Expense. In post-symptom (pre-claim) interventions the cost is rolled into a customized program developed for the specific employer. Windham Group will negotiate flat rate, risk-share or consulting cost arrangements with our customers depending on their needs. Please contact us for more information.