Canadian Occupational Safety

26 Canadian Occupational Safety | www.cos-mag.com to conduct the fi tness evaluation at a clinic. The candidate fi lls out a health questionnaire and the clinic checks resting heart rate and blood pressure to make sure it is safe for the worker to undergo the testing. The worker will then go through the test by using vari- ous machines to lift, carry, push, pull, kneel, reach, twist and climb. There is a safety component built in to the test- ing whereby candidates start from zero and the load is progressively increased. The clinic monitors biomechanical fac- tors, blood pressure and behavioural indicators throughout the testing. When the test is done, the clinic prepares a report and the employer fi nds out if the candidate is fi t or unfi t for the job. Some employers want to know more information, but that can put them at risk for human rights violations. "The safest, most defensible argument is: 'They told us he was fi t, they told us he was unfi t, that's all we know and that's what we made our deci- sion based on,'" says Allegretto. CBI performs about 8,000 post-offer employment tests per year and 25 per cent of the candidates fail, he says. If the candidate comes back as fi t, then he gets the job. If he comes back as unfi t, then the offer is rescinded and the employer often allows the candi- date to reapply in six months. The raw details of the report are kept at the clinic and not shared with the employer. They might come in handy if the candidate lodges a human rights claim or as a baseline if the employee sustains an injury in the future. If an employer is considering imple- menting functional fi tness evaluations, it's important to strike while the iron's hot in order to get support and buy-in from the organization, says Demers. "If people are really anxious to do it, they just had an injury, just lost a project and you want to get this in but it takes you three months to imple- ment it, by the third month people are like, 'Why are we even doing this?'" he says. "You don't want to lose that internal momentum… Do it well but do it fast." More and more employers are con- ducting functional fi tness evaluations, largely due to the changing demo- graphics, says Chapman. "We have an aging workforce and an increase in obesity and a lot more people are not in as good of shape as they used to be," she says. Employers in heavy industries are especially interested in functional fi t- ness evaluations to help them beat the competition. "If they have one extra injury over their competition, they could lose out on multi-million dollar projects; even in a very competitive proposal," says Demers. "If they have the wrong injury statistics, they just don't get the work." Employers in Western Canada may be seeing more of this type of test- ing because the construction owners associations are moving towards func- tional fi tness as an evolved fi tness for duty site requirement. They aim to accomplish this by developing indus- try-based physical demands analyses, says Demers. This is expected to be launched in the next couple of years. It's important to monitor injury sta- tistics after the functional fi tness tests are in place. For example, perhaps the back injury rates have gone down but there is still an issue with shoulder injuries. The employer would need to look at what jobs people are getting injured in and maybe adjust the testing program, says Chapman. The program also needs to change with the company. "If the physical demands change — they're buying new equipment to do things or they add more workers in so the frequency goes down — it needs to be refl ected in the test," says Chapman. Employers also need to take a look at the demographics of the people who are passing and failing. Are the major- ity of women failing? Is there a specifi c minority group that is failing? "You want to take a look at that and fi gure out what's going on there… and see how you can improve that," says Chapman. For example, perhaps there is another way to lift the 85-pound box so that more women can be included in an organization's hiring pool. When the numbers are crunched, even saving one lost-time injury claim is worth it, says Allegretto. For example, the average cost of a post-offer employ- ment test from CBI is between $100 to $200 and the average claim cost in B.C. is $11,860, he says. That's not taking into account the indirect costs such as increased workers' compensa- tion board premiums, replacement of manpower, reduced profi tability and productivity, damage to reputation and costs of internal investigations. When evaluating the post-offer employment testing program, Lambert from Post Consumer Brands says the company discussed if the cost would be worth it. "I keep coming back to that one injury in 2009. That $700,000 would pay for (the screening) for the next 10 to 15 years." We have an aging workforce and an increase in obesity and a lot more people are not in as good of shape as they used to be. 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