This is the first in a five-part series of blog posts recapping our webinar, Preventing strains and sprains.

The start of SFM’s webinar focused on understanding strain and sprain injuries.

Sarah Wahlberg, Senior Claims Representative at SFM, discussed the differences between the two maladies. While both are soft-tissue injuries, strains are an injury to a muscle or tendon; sprains are injuries or tears to ligaments.

She continued her portion of the presentation with:

• Symptoms
• Identifying sprains and strains
• Frequency and type by industry

Wahlberg, who has more than a decade of experience in the field, wrapped up her segment with SFM claims data, which shows:

• A 14% increase in strain and sprain severity from 2023-24
• 60% increase in in costs for workers 45 and older
• 83% of reported back injuries are a result of strains and sprains

Check out the complete recording of the webinar and view other posts in our blog series highlighting the presentation.

• Part II: Strain and sprain injury effects on work comp claims
• Part III: Identifying ergonomic risk factors in the workplace
• Part IV: Implementing solutions for workplace strain and sprain risks
• Part V: Legal aspects to strain and sprain injuries

This is the third in a five-part series of blog posts recapping our webinar, Preventing strains and sprains.

The third portion of SFM’s webinar focused on identifying ergonomic risk factors in the workplace.

Sara Cooper, Senior Loss Prevention Representative, examined how employers can make their jobsites safer and mitigate the potential for musculoskeletal disorders. The three primary ergonomic risks in the workplace come from:

• Force
• Repetition
• Awkward postures

At the same time, there are individual risk factors that can exacerbate ergonomic risk factors, such as poor health, not recognizing early warning signs, not resting and recovering correctly, etc.

Safety leaders should also keep an eye out for other ergonomic risk factors, Cooper said, including compression or contact stress, cold temperatures and vibration.

Lastly, she wrapped up her portion of the presentation by discussing the hierarchy of controls, a system of addressing workplace hazards from most to least effective:

• Eliminating the hazard
• Substituting the hazard (replacing it)
• Engineering controls (isolating people from the hazard)
• Administrative controls – changing how people work
• Personal protective equipment

Check out the complete recording of the webinar and view other posts in our blog series highlighting the presentation.

• Part I: Understanding strain and sprain injuries
• Part II: Strain and sprain injury effects on work comp claims
• Part IV: Implementing solutions for workplace strain and sprain risks
• Part V: Legal aspects to strain and sprain injuries

This is the fourth in a five-part series of blog posts recapping our webinar, Preventing strains and sprains.

The fourth segment of SFM’s webinar focused on implementing solutions for the workplace risk factors identified in the previous section. (See Part III below for more information.)

Here, Eric Johnson, Loss Prevention Specialist, discussed minimizing ergonomic risk factors in the workplace. He gave specific examples of things employers can do to reduce musculoskeletal disorders created by high-force loads, repetition and awkward postures.

Johnson, who has about 20 years of experience in the field, also provided information on other methods to prevent musculoskeletal disorders, such as stretching programs, getting employees to move more during work hours and encouraging them to drink more water.

Additionally, he outlined safety programs and training opportunities employers can use to help maintain a safe workplace. To wrap up his portion of the presentation, Johnson encouraged annual reviews of:

• Safety programs
• Injury analysis
• Employee feedback

Check out the complete recording of the webinar and view other posts in our blog series highlighting the presentation.

• Part I: Understanding strain and sprain injuries
• Part II: Strain and sprain injury effects on work comp claims
• Part III: Identifying ergonomic risk factors in the workplace
• Part V: Legal aspects to strain and sprain injuries

Skip isn’t the only superhero who cares about safety. School bus drivers play the role of safety hero every day as they go about their jobs.

The 2025 National School Bus Safety Week is Oct. 20-24, and it reminds us of bus drivers’ important roles in getting people where they’re going safely.

National School Bus Safety Week brings awareness to the dangers for drivers, students and pedestrians. It’s everyone’s responsibility to stay safe around school buses.

School bus driver safety tips and resources

Bus drivers have additional duties beyond transportation. Drivers must be aware of their own risk of injury, while driving safely and keeping an eye on their surroundings.

School Bus Safety Week offers a chance to provide drivers with a few safety basics, including:

• Remember that drivers and pedestrians around you may be distracted
• Use safe practices when performing checks or maintenance
• Maintain three points of contact when entering or leaving the bus
• Make sure everyone is seated before starting to move the bus

SFM’s safety resources help keep bus drivers injury-free, from pre-trip inspection to exiting the vehicle using 3 points of contact. Download SFM’s Supervisor Initiated Training talks tailored to transportation workers to make it easy for your leaders to have a discussion with their teams about school bus safety.

National School Bus Safety Week is sponsored by the National Association for Pupil Transportation , National School Transportation Association and National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services .

Originally published October 2018; updated August 2025.

As summer winds down, school safety should be top of mind.

Schools face unique safety challenges relative to other types of organizations, which is why SFM has a wealth of resources available. View our School safety resources page for more, plus links to even more information for keeping schools safe.

Below are a few highlights for you to peruse.

Safety training talks for schools

SFM’s Supervisor Initiated Training (SIT) series helps managers talk with their staff about preventing common sources of injuries.

• Behavior interventions
• Equipment use safety for custodians
• Buildings & Grounds combo pack

See all school-related SITs

5-Minute Solutions

Check out SFM’s 5-Minute Solutions for brief training talks on safety-related topics.

• Alternative intervention and de-escalation tactics
• Facilitate, don’t participate
• Heat stress

See all school-related 5-Minute Solutions

Preventing work injuries can save you money, time and stress, but those aren’t the most important reasons to establish a strong workplace safety program.

“Always remember that at the center of every workers’ compensation claim is a person and an injury can interrupt their life, their family, their hobbies and more,” said SFM Loss Prevention Specialist Mike Fetting. “It’s important not to lose sight of that fact.”

In addition to the impact to the employee, work injuries can lower morale among coworkers and may increase workers’ compensation premiums.

The only controllable item in an organization’s workers’ compensation premium cost is its experience modifier (e-mod), which is directly impacted by claim frequency and severity. When a claim introduces costs, it affects the company’s e-mod for three years.

If your claim history is average among similar types and sizes of businesses, your e-mod will be 1.0. Each claim that results in a cost has the potential to increase your e-mod above 1.0, meaning worse than your peers, which can directly increase the premium amount you pay. The lower your e-mod is, the less you pay in premium.

Hazard assessments and developing controls

Every safety program should include an ongoing process to identify workplace hazards, including anything within the scope of a job duty that could cause physical or mental harm to employees. For example, loud noise levels, wet floors or cracks in the parking lot could all be workplace hazards.

Depending on where employees are working, hazards could exist inside, outside, on a jobsite or even over the road, said SFM Loss Prevention Specialist Dana Mickelson.

Hazards can arise from materials, equipment, tools, or machines used by employees or within the workplace. They can even arise from people such as outside contractors, other employees who create unsafe conditions for others, or supervisors who do not correct issues.

There are several assessment methods that safety and loss prevention leaders can use to identify hazards.

Identify loss history trends: For example, if an organization had 10 injuries last quarter and five are slips and falls from a wet floor, that should be a good indication to focus on slips and falls. Even if there aren’t any trends, employers can still use loss history to determine which jobs or areas to focus on.

Use other records to find risks and hazards to focus on: Examples include inspection reports, data safety sheets and job hazard analysis.

Complete inspections: Inspections can be done by a member of your safety committee, an employee, a supervisor or other leader, or a third party. They should be completed after incidents occur as part of the investigation process. We also recommend performing inspections periodically at different intervals, such as daily, monthly, or annually, depending on the hazard.

Conduct investigations: Injuries and near misses should always be investigated. The steps of an investigation include collecting facts – who, what, when, where and how – and then analyzing the facts to determine the root causes. Once the root causes are identified, decide what corrective actions to take for each root cause.

Have discussions: Ask employees about their safety concerns because they know and understand their job the best. Consider developing a safety committee consisting of different disciplines and departments to discuss hazards. During the discussions, think about potential emergency situations, and routine and non-routine tasks, such as those completed only once a year.

Prioritize the hazards identified

Some hazards will have easy fixes or can be corrected on-the-spot, but if there are several hazards without quick fixes, use a risk matrix to help you prioritize. A risk matrix is a grid where you plot likelihood of occurrence on one axis, and severity on the other.

First, determine the likelihood that an incident or event will occur based on a numeric scale – for example, one represents the lowest likelihood and four is the highest. Then, determine the severity if an incident or event were to occur, with one being low severity and four being catastrophic. For example, if you determine a hazard has a likelihood of three, and a severity of two, that is a medium-high risk hazard and should be given higher priority than the low-risk hazards.

Hierarchy of controls

After prioritizing hazards, determine what controls (i.e., corrections) to put in place. There are several options, and some are more effective than others. These options, ranked from most effective to least effective, are:

• Elimination: Physically remove the hazard
• Substitution: Replace the hazard
• Engineering controls: Isolate people from the hazard
• Administrative controls: Change the way people work
• Personal protective equipment (PPE): Protect the worker with personal protective equipment

There will most likely be several controls for each hazard. Some controls will be an immediate fix, and in most cases, you need to determine controls that will result in improved and sustainable corrections.

Finally, implement the controls. Develop a plan to document progress and set accountability. The plan should include the hazard, controls, target due dates, who is responsible for implementation, and a completion date.

Keep in mind that performing assessments and determining and implementing controls is a continual, repeated process.

To learn more about building and maintaining your safety and loss prevention program visit the Safety tab on our website. You can also reach out to your SFM contacts.

Originally published September 2022; updated August 2025.

A strong safety culture starts with a high level of safety awareness among your employees. Getting there requires consistent, effective communication between leadership and front-line workers.

When communicating with employees about safety, leaders should start by explaining why it’s important to your organization — that leadership cares about its employees, and your culture is one where coworkers care about each other.

“The employees don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care about them personally,” said SFM Loss Prevention Specialist Steve Lichtenberg. “Lead with passion and build a rapport with the employees.”

Tips for high-impact safety training

Newer employees are at the highest risk for injuries, so it’s important to start providing safety training right away with new employee orientation. After that, plan on regular check-ins and recurring training throughout that first year and continuing during the tenure of their employment.

For ongoing safety training, it can be helpful to create a training topic checklist to follow throughout the year. To get a complete picture of the hazard exposures employees have, the training schedule should include:

• High hazards
• Loss trends
• Near miss and incident-only reporting
• Compliance

If possible, try to offer training frequently in smaller segments, as employees tend to lose focus over long sessions.

Variety is key with recurring training to keep staff engaged and help boost understanding, and the educational method used to train can have an impact on the effectiveness of each training session, according to SFM Senior Loss Prevention Representative Sara Cooper.

Safety training methods from most to least effective

Our safety professionals ranked common safety training methods from most to least effective in terms of employee understanding and retention. It’s important to note that everyone learns differently, so it’s best to use a variety of the listed methods.

1. On the job training: Employees first hear, then see, then do
2. Train the trainer: Being trained to teach someone else
3. Job shadowing: Learning from a fellow employee
4. Toolbox talks: Leading short safety talks regularly
5. Computer-based training: While efficient, employees can’t ask questions
6. Lecture: Good for relaying a small amount of information to a large group

Techniques for safety conversations

Formal safety training is important, but it’s also important to try to work conversations about safety in throughout the workday. It may take some practice at first, and it pays to be intentional.

SFM Loss Prevention Specialist Mike Fetting recommends a few types of safety conversations to have on a regular basis:

The walk around conversation – In this conversation an employee and supervisor might talk about the employee’s goals and plans for safety. The supervisor could also ask the employee what safety measures the organization does well and what needs improving.

The safety feedback conversation – These can be quick compliments to an employee on a job well done with a follow up question about how the employee made it happen.

The “why I care about safety” conversation – This tends to be very personal. Some examples include an employee’s past work experience, a family member’s safety experience, or simply that the individual cares about their coworkers.

Modified Gemba Walk – Drawing on a Lean management philosophy technique, this conversation starts by visiting an employee at their workstation and trying to learn a task. That can be done by watching them do the work, asking questions about how the task is done, and if a potential hazard is identified, asking the individual why they do the task that way. The idea here is that a safety manager or supervisor can better understand the job and process if they interact with the employee and try to see things from their perspective.

During your conversations, be sure to take the opportunity to learn from your employee.

“When it comes to safety conversations with employees, listening more and talking less can sometimes be the best approach,” Fetting said.

Encourage employee feedback

Communication is a two-way street and getting feedback from employees at all levels of the company is an important part of an effective safety program. Encouraging safety feedback starts with trust. Employees need confidence in leadership to act on feedback they provide, and they need to trust their coworkers to speak up when they observe safety concerns.

Safety leaders can encourage employee feedback by:

• Promoting hazard reporting
• Implementing near miss reporting
• Adding a suggestion box for indirect feedback
• Making it safe to speak up (no negative repercussions for reporting hazards or unsafe behaviors)

Once an employee provides feedback, follow up in several ways:

• Thank the employee for their feedback and acknowledge their concern
• Work to understand the situation better by going back to the employee and getting more information
• Investigate quickly
• Provide timely assessments or answers for every report or suggestion, regardless of whether you were able to make changes
• Share any safety changes made with the company by email or newsletter and celebrate the successful use of the reporting process
• Reward the employee for their effort

Safety training and communication play a fundamental role in a successful loss prevention program. To get safety resources and learn more about building a loss prevention program visit the Safety page or reach out to your SFM loss prevention representative.

Want to make your workplace safer, but unsure where to start? Or maybe you want to be sure you have all the basics covered before you delve deeper in a certain area.

Either way, these seven essentials, identified by SFM’s loss prevention staff, will help make your organization a safer place to work.

1. Know the hazards

To reduce your risk of work-related injury or illness, you must first know the particular hazards of your job or workplace.

Help identify hazards by downloading this free workplace safety analysis checklist . You can also learn about risks by analyzing all workplace injuries to find the root causes and asking your staff for input.

2. Reduce workplace stress

Job stress has been linked to health problems, higher health care costs, increased risk of workplace accidents and more. Take steps to prevent stress from interfering with employees’ productivity, health and well-being with these strategies to reduce stress in the workplace.

3. Get up and move

Encourage employees to take breaks and move around regularly throughout the day. Simply working in small breaks for movement can make a big difference in combating the dangers of staying in a static position all day long.

4. Pay attention to ergonomics

Use ergonomically designed furniture and equipment , and rearrange work areas to maintain a neutral posture and keep everything within easy reach.

5. Use safe lifting techniques

Use four safe moves when picking up and carrying heavy loads: Lift from a position of power, keep the load close to your body, use a staggered stance and don’t twist.

And watch the weight — the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommends limiting manual lifting to a maximum of 35 pounds for the average person. Check out more safe lifting techniques or our lifting safety video  to see the technique in action.

6. Ensure employees wear personal protective equipment

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) can dramatically reduce risk of injury if worn correctly. Examples of PPE include gear such as earplugs, hard hats, safety goggles, gloves, full-face masks and safety shoes.

7. Encourage employees to speak up

Ask for input from employees often, and ensure everyone feels comfortable bringing safety hazards to their supervisors’ attention. Employees should feel that their concerns are being heard and acted upon by company leaders.

Workplace safety matters to every industry

When we think about workplace safety, images of construction workers hanging off skyscrapers or power line technicians in cherry pickers often pop into our heads, but there are hazards in any workplace — even office environments.

According to the National Safety Council , the top three causes of workplace injuries accounting for at least one day away from work from 2021-22 were:

• Overexertion in lifting (such as a strain or sprain caused by lifting something too heavy)
• Contact with an object or equipment (being hit by something)
• Slips, trips and falls

While some injuries might be unlikely in an office or other relatively low-risk environment, certainly a slip-and-fall or lifting injury is possible anywhere.

Reducing hazards as much as possible and training employees about the risks can go a long way toward prevention. SFM offers a number of free resources to prevent indoor slips and falls, winter slips and falls and lifting injuries.

Originally published June 2017; updated August 2025.

This is the last in a four-part series of SFM blogs recapping our November 2024 webinar, De-escalation in the workplace, An SFM webinar for policyholders.

The final portion of SFM’s webinar on de-escalation focused on the legal aspects of a workplace violence injury.

Cheryl Bowsfield, former Senior Defense Counsel with SFM’s in-house law firm (retired in July 2025), outlined the ways in which implementing workplace violence de-escalation practices and procedures can benefit an injured workers claim and your workers’ compensation policy.

She also discussed whether workplace violence injuries are compensable or not depending on the situation, and provided specific examples of incidents in certain industries:

• Schools
• Heath care facilities
• Warehouses
• Fast food establishments

An attorney with 26 years of experience in the field, Bowsfield also talked about workplace violence involving third-party individuals and the costs of litigated claims.

Lastly, the presentation wrapped up with action items employers can take regarding workplace violence and de-escalation. Watch the video above for details.

Check out the complete recording of the webinar, and you can also peruse previous installments from our blog series on de-escalation:

• Part I: An introduction – Workplace violence and de-escalation
• Part II: Incorporating de-escalation into your workplace safety program
• Part III: Handling workplace violence claims