Joanna Owen Clouston
CHICKASHA — When looking for someone to hire, most employers are looking for that one person who is perfect for the job. The search may be just a phone call away. WorkStep, a functional testing program is designed to see if the person the employer thinks is right for the job really is.
Monday March 20 about 50 business owners, managers and other interested individuals attended a seminar at Canadian Valley Technology Center, where they learned how injury claims impact their business in ways not easily seen. They were also shown how functional employment testing can significantly reduce costs, increase productivity and reduce turnover.
Shrm Chickasha Branch an affiliate of Great Plains Chapter Society of Human Resource Management, along with Montionworks a physical therapy, sports and industrial rehabilitation center out of Chickasha sponsored the seminar.
Lindee Greer, PTA was guest speaker at the seminar. Greer is a practicing Physical Therapist Assistant at Odessa Physical Therapy in Odessa, Texas. She said WorkStep functional employment testing began in 1986 in Odessa Texas out on the oil fields. She said the owner of the oil company kept having employee turnover and a lot of worker’s compensation claims. He finally decided to see about a way to test the functional abilities of the people he was offering jobs to, and WorkStep was born.
Garland Terry, Safety Specialist with MotionWorks said they have been a WorkSteps provider in the Grady County area for four years.
“With some of the big businesses leaving the state we have a recent explosion in growth in the area... there is a large pool of prospective employees to chose from,” Terry said. “Businesses like Delta Faucet are leaving Oklahoma because they can’t afford the worker’s comp claims.”
Greer told the audience the idea behind workshops is to test the prospective employees on their physical ability to perform the task they are being hired for. The testing she said allows for employers to withdraw the offer of employment if they candidate in question can not perform the essential functions needed for the job.
She said the most information can be gathered during the post job offer.
“When you’ve offered someone the job contingent on them going through the testing, you are allowed to collect a lot more medical information on them. During the pre-offer stage, when a company is looking at various people to who might fill the job, only a functional test can be performed. That test will tell the prospective employer if the individual is capable of performing the task the job requires,” she said. “At the post-offer stage, not only will a functional test be done, but also any past injuries must be reported.”
New hires are not the only people WorkSteps can test. They also offer a fit-for-duty test. This test can be administered once a person gets hurt. They can be tested once they are able to take the test and then test can be administered on a frequent or infrequent bases to check for progress in their rehabilitation.
“As we age so do our abilities, if your company has the rules in place, if you are questioning a long-term employee’s abilities to perform the duties of the job you can have them tested using fit-for-duty,” Greer said. “Those long term employees you want to keep, you don’t want them getting hurt doing something they are no longer capable of doing safely.”
She said the fit-for-duty test is not designed to weed people out for job termination, “If you know where they are physically, you can work with them to get them back to were they were performing before or re-classify their job if possible.”
The test run anywhere between $150 to $200, Greer said, “but when you think of the skyrocketing cost of workman’s comp claims, it really isn’t that much. We can’t say workers wont get hurt, but we can say who is better capable of doing the job and just what there capabilities were at when hired.” she said. “Don’t you as employers have the right to find the best qualified candidate for the position?”
“The testing is customized to look at job-specific strength requirements and most common medical risks such as cumulative traumas, backs and carpal tunnel syndromes,” Greer said.
When a company has hired an employee they want to test before placing in the job, they contact someone who can do the WorkStep testing. Before the test is administered, a WorkStep tester will go out to the business and do various forms of measuring, weighing, filming and analyzing the physical demands and work environment. From the evaluation and job descriptions, a test is formulated.
Once all the data is put into the computer, the testing begins. First there is a range of motion, strength, posture and joint integrity test. Next comes the assessment of cardiovascular status which includes recovery conditions, risk profile, blood pressure and heart rate. At this point if a problem is detected the test will be terminated until the issue is resolved. “We are concerned with the overall health of the clients who come in for the post-offer testing,” said Greer.
“We had a gentleman come in one time for our testing and we found he had very high blood pressure. At that point we stopped the testing and told him he would need to go to his personal physician and have the blood pressure looked at and do what ever the doctor recommend to bring it down before we could resume the testing,” she said. “He got very mad and refused to go to the doctor. We had to tell him we could not continue the testing... a few months later we heard he had died of a heart attack.”
The next test done is to check the static (at rest) strength evaluation of the back and extremities and then the dynamic (in motion) strength evaluation of the back and extremities. Next they use high-tech computerized equipment to do an analysis of deficits and or abnormalities. A risk profile for overuse syndromes is done, like carpal tunnel syndrome.
Once all the personal data is collected the job specific or job simulation is performed. The person being tested will be asked to perform in a structured environment the exact duties the job they are going after will require. At this point Greer said about 10 percent of the people tested are found to be not capable of safely performing the functions required for the position they are going after.
Greer said WorkSteps is designed to look at job specific strengths and a persons baseline full body function.
“When we get a baseline we essentially know what the person is physically capable of. For instance, how much they can lift safely,” she said. “If the person gets hurt on the job, the company has the baseline to start with. If their abilities were only at 80 percent when hired and their injury brings their abilities down to 50 percent, instead of the job being responsible for the other 50 percent they are responsible for only the 30 percent, since they can prove the person was not at 100 percent capability when hired.”
Greer said the overall mission of the testing is to help prevent on the job injuries, by placing the appropriate person in the appropriate job, to control injury related costs and combat fraudulent claims.
She told the audience while most people look perfectly healthy “you don’t always know what lies just beneath the service.”
