Project Description
David Wilde
GM Freight Build, UGL LIMITED
It gives management a lot of ways to have a safety conversation with people.
UGL Rail & Defence is a company that’s heavily involved in freight and passenger rolling stock. We manufacture, we maintain, we have a supply chain. Around 1,500 people in the business. Turnover about a billion dollars a year.
We engaged Move 4 Life because we were looking to address our high rates of musculoskeletal injuries in our ageing workforce. We very quickly worked out that if we could get people to move better, we could address the pareto of most of our injuries and that was directly compatible with what Move 4 Life was presenting.
I liked the model straight away. That it was about training our people, it wasn’t about the company doing everything for the person. It was about making the people capable of looking after themselves. All the movements were sensible, it can be great fun, the training would be fun. People would learn things that would help them at work, and at home.
And we worked with Move 4 Life to come up with a model where we could have a team of around 12 trainers across the company. They were trained by Move 4 Life and then those people have rolled out the training in our sites. Wherever we’ve needed help Move 4 Life has actually come and helped us with expertise. It’s an easy engagement.
It gives management a lot of ways to have a safety conversation with people.
I like the fact that you’re engaging people who’ve found general improvements in their flexibility, the way they move at home. I really like it when the guys come and tell you they’ve started to do those exercises with their family. You actually can remind people that using their body properly is so much easier, very simple to do, and if they start to repeat those patterns and skills, they’ll form some really good habits that will stand them in good stead.
We’ve done detailed analysis on the first year of operation and found that we’ve had a 30% reduction in MSI’s.
Having got all of the senior management and leadership team through the training, I don’t get asked too much about whether it’s value for money! People can straight away see that the methodology’s good, that it engages people, that it’s part of a better safety culture. Which is really quite satisfying.
Move 4 Life has met all of my expectations, and what I find really satisfying about it is how it gets everybody participating and looking after themselves. It’s been extremely rewarding to see the personal engagement of all of the employees.