Ergonomics adds benefits to organizations in a lot of ways. During troubling economic times, a good ergonomics program can help companies increase productivity in the workplace, prevent work-related injuries and the accompanying cut in workers’ compensation claims, and other costs related to those injuries. Implementing ergonomics is more important now than ever in this pandemic, where workplace injuries are on the rise. Hence, it’s the perfect time to market your services and let your ideal clients know that you can help them. What I’m going to be sharing with you in this post is not only related to your sophistication as an Ergonomic Consultant, but also your sophistication in the types of marketing that you do. Read on to find out what sets ergonomics apart from other industries and what almost guarantees our staying power.

Market Your Services: Ergonomics Reduce Costs

Before I dive into this article, I want to introduce first my program called Accelerate: The Business of Ergonomics. I’m so excited to be sharing some details about this program because this goes hand-in-hand with what I'm going to be talking about in this post. I'm going to be opening the enrollment for the Accelerate membership at the end of March 2021. If you want to grow your ergonomics business and you're looking for a community to support you grow, I encourage you to join. I can help you step up your marketing and your resources as an Ergonomic Consultant. So if you're interested in that, head to this link to join the waitlist and get the latest updates for the training related to the membership coming up.

Reducing Costs with Ergonomics

The first thing I want to talk about is your sophistication as an Ergonomic Consultant. And yes, your knowledge and skills goes hand-in-hand with having the latest tools to market your business. Regardless of whether we serve office ergonomics or industrial ergonomics services, I believe that it's not a matter of “if” an injury is going to happen, but it’s a matter of “when” it’ll happen. And in the vast majority of cases, these injuries are going to be compensable injuries. If you haven’t heard of the term, a compensable injury is an injury that happened as a result of normal job duties in the course of the employee’s work. In a work-related injury, the employee is (typically) qualified for workers’ compensation benefits.

In the past, I’ve managed workplace ergonomics programs, and I also did a short stint covering in-house compensable/non-compensable injury management for a year. I helped them develop a return-to-work program to bring their injured employees back to work safely as soon as physically possible. At that time, I thought I was combining my expertise as an Ergonomics Consultant with getting a really good idea of the need for ergonomics on top of managing short-term and long-term disability. However, what I found out from that experience was a completely different side of the picture. I barely had any time to do ergonomics because injury management was a full-time job - I was constantly talking to treating practitioners, making return-to-work plans, managing accommodations, and doing all the paperwork.

At the same time, I saw how costly injuries can get. I managed expensive workplace claims in the past, which cost the employer hundreds of thousands of dollars. Both workers’ compensation and non-workers’ compensated injuries are very expensive for an employer. A lot of companies initiate ergonomics efforts as a way of cutting costs related to injuries. But in most cases, these injury expenses aren’t inevitable costs because they can be prevented. Many companies, however, are recognizing that even though they may apply ergonomics initially as a way to prevent workplace injuries and to lower compensation costs, they gained other business benefits.

There’s Always a Need for Ergonomic Services

If you look at the statistics, there's at least one type of workers’ compensation injury or just a significant amount of aches and pains that’s going to prevent someone from working to their full capacity once a year for every company. A compensable injury is a huge cost to employers, and the costs will start to accumulate even if someone is only off work for just 5 days. For this reason, companies need to have a consultant like you at their fingertips to ensure that if such a situation were to arise, they know exactly who to call. 

Ergonomic risk factors exist no matter how the economy is doing. As long as we're using the correct marketing tactics to get to the underlying concerns of work-related injury costs or insurance-related costs, there’ll be a need for our services even in times of economic uncertainty. That should be interesting to you as someone who wants to grow their ergonomics practice, whether or not you do it as a consultant or you're already an in-house program manager, or you're just helping your colleagues level up their ergonomics business. All we need to do is to represent what we do and build those relationships. Remember that we’re a cost-saving, profitable type of service for our clients. And I believe that using that as part of our marketing strategy is the difference that’ll make a huge difference for you. Sharing how you can help cut costs and make more profit to your contacts is going to be useful, whether or not you work internally for an organization as an in-house ergonomics manager or working with outside organizations. 

Let Them Know

Applying ergonomics is a cost-saving measure, and there’s never been a better time to grow your ergonomic business than right now. However, the way for your ideal clients to know that you exist has to do with how you market your services. Many consultants are leaving a huge opportunity on the table by not explaining that we can not only prevent injuries, but we can also make an ergonomic program that’s not difficult to manage and help handle accommodated work duties. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit related to ergonomics that many organizations are either ignoring or aren't aware that it exists, and it’s our responsibility to share the message that we’re the ones who can help them.

That’s why I'm thrilled that you're reading this post, and I hope that I planted the seed that’ll eventually grow in a multifaceted marketing opportunity for you. We can all learn how to do office ergonomic assessments or industrial ergonomic assessments, but if we're not marketing our services to reach our clients, then what's the point of even learning this stuff? We have to get out of our comfort zones and share what we do so that when the need arises (and it’ll surely arise), we can help the companies in our community remain profitable and keep their employees safe and happy. At the end of the day, we're happy as well because we also get revenue for doing something that we’re passionate about. 

Level Up Your Marketing and Ergonomic Systems

Like I mentioned earlier, I have some training coming up at the end of March 2021. I'm only opening my program 4 times a year, and this is going to be the first time I'm opening it in 2021. I’m going to be sharing with you all the practices that I’ve learned about ergonomics and marketing ergonomics. Those are the two aspects you really have to have a firm basis on if you want to grow your ergonomics practice, whether or not you're an in-house consultant or you're working with outside organizations. So if you’re interested in that, just click this link to join the waitlist.