A lost time injury (LTI) is known as an injury that is sustained by an employee leading to loss of productive work due to absenteeism or workers’ delays. Injury attributes to lost time when the worker is unable to perform regular duties assigned to his or her position (KENNY, 1994). Lost time injury comes with wide array of disadvantages such as financial losses, physical and emotional distress.
Outline
The costs of workplace time loss is enormous
The reason is because injuries tend to cause a shift in the time of work and it takes time off for the recovery. In addition, it is just not a limit to worker’s regular shifts but it extends to all shifts where a worker is unable to perform his daily tasks (European Union, 1989). The fact is that from the time of initial injury till the time a worker is able to return to regular work duties, much time is lost during this duration of injury. The cost of workplace time loss is unacceptably high.
Time loss injury causes emotional hardship for employees’ and family members. It leads to inadequate employees’ compensation benefits. It attributes to inadequate medical insurance of employees’ families. Certainly, due to time loss injury an employee may have inability to maintain the previous standard of living.
The higher rate of time loss in industries due to injury
Statistics shows that occupational injuries and illness cases makes employee to shift from work. About 4.1 million employees are affected by work injuries. Cost of compensation has increased reaching $60 billion from 2000. The current statistics shows $74 billion in the year 2009 with excluded indirect costs, workplace facilities as well as occupational illness (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2015). The lost time injury frequency rates illustrates the number of lost time injuries in a given duration period which is relative to total number of hours employee worked in the same accounting duration. In most cases, the number of lost time injuries per hour is always very small.
Strategies to address time lost injury (TLI)
Increasing vigilance in workplaces
In any industry, it is important for every employee to understand that everyone is responsible for safety of workers. Everyone should understand the subject matter and increase vigilance in the workplace (National Safety Council, 1978). In this situation, the place of work in an industry demands vigilance. Employee should behave safely during routine time. The fact is that vigilance is important for safety in workplace.
Proper training on safety measures for the type of work
Training should focus on the type of work employee are assigned to work on. A right training should be provided based on the work being performed in the workplace.
Embracing injury and illness prevention programs
This strategy enables workers to avoid huge financial losses. Prevention programs are supposed to solve the issue associated with lost time injury in industries. Lost time injury should be perceived a big issue because they can be avoided. Some of the injury prevention programs such as OSHA’s cooperative programs have been adopted in different states (OSHA, 2012).
Conclusion
In conclusion, lost time injury cases are high in transportation and warehousing industries. Most of the incidents are reported in these industries. There are programs which are effective in combating injury and illness in workplace. The constant workplace safety vigilance may be used to avoid workplace tragedies (Stewart, 2003). This aspect explores that in every sector there is a demand for vigilance because of workplace safety issues within employment situation. Therefore, lost time for the damages can be recovered depending on the nature of injuries. If the injury physically prevented the injured worker from performing his or her job without unusual difficulty can be recovered.
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