Matt Weber Troublemaker at Fit For Work

Sometimes you meet a company who has thought through every aspect of their business and relentlessly perfected customer interaction to the point that you scratch your head and wonder how they achieved so much. Fit For Work is one of those companies.

In this 25 minute podcast, Matt Weber, Fit For Work’s National Director of Sales, takes us through a rapid-fire story of a company who’s been innovating in their business sector since 1998. They have one of the most clearly articulated brand statements I’ve ever seen:

“We prevent people from getting injured.”

If that statement doesn’t seem earthshaking to you, it’s because you’re not a Safety Manager, Plant Manager, or a CFO.

The Current Market

The prevailing practice is to wait for employees to come to you with an injury you can treat. Treating employees was the best and only solution out there. So, naturally, innovators within that model decided they could gain efficiencies by treating employees as quickly as possible and getting them back to work sooner. They contracted a PT or OT down the street or had them sit in a company office for 40 hours a week. While some saw reductions in injuries, the injury equation itself hadn’t changed. In tech companies this approach is called “Break/Fix.” They also wait for things to break and then they fix them. But that’s a topic for another podcast.

Safety Managers and Plant Managers keep an eye on employees who work in warehouses, distribution centers, delivery vehicles, and construction sites. Their awareness of proactive injury prevention is low. In some cases, safety personnel don’t believe Fit For Work’s claim of reducing injuries by 50% – easily proved true. Others think Fit For Work might be a threat to their jobs – easily proven false. Matt said, “There is growing awareness of a preventative approach, but it’s been slow.”

Follow our podcast on your favorite channel

iTunes Spotify Google

Troublemakers at the helm

Tom Tobin and Keith Adamson created Fit For Work back in the late 90s and built a strong culture of customer service. Now, current CEO John Groves has picked up the torch and focused the company on three core components:

Infrastructure – All Onsite Early Intervention Providers are Fit For Work employees, not subcontracted out, to ensure consistency and quality. Fit For Work also has a team of Certified Professional Ergonomists, Certified Safety Professionals, and Industrial Engineers who support the Providers and/or deliver value to their clients directly through one time projects or ongoing Subscription Services. Fit For Work’s sister company, Evidence in Motion, is the U.S.’s leading Musculoskeletal education company. This allows Fit For Work to harness a ton of evidence-based knowledge for training their providers. Included in the infrastructure is Fit For Work’s proprietary portal, a custom-built data gathering and knowledge tool that looks for (privatized) consistencies and inconsistencies across the population of a company as well as country-wide. The Predictive Analytics built into this AI-driven portal are now forecasting the next injury before it happens.
Culture – A quick story is all that’s needed to validate Fit For Work’s culture. Indeed, the leading employment-related search engine asked Fit For Work to be one of 20 companies in the U.S. to participate in a transparent beta project in which they surveyed the entire company. One stipulation: Indeed could fully publish anything and everything they discovered about the culture without any oversight from the executives at Fit For Work. Once the results were in, Fit For Work scored the very highest results of the entire study country wide.
Results – When you have the infrastructure and culture right, results are much easier. The result is simple: a 50% reduction in injuries and the accompanying costs. And happier, healthier employees.

To me, this level of precision in setting up the success measures of your business is an indicator that troublemakers are at the helm.

The User Experience

Matt broke the users down into two categories:

For the clients’ companies as a whole – Fit For Work is a turnkey setup, meaning it’s easy to onboard. Safety Professionals think of them as an on-site extension of themselves. Companies see results very quickly. ROI is in the first few months. Fit For Work’s contracts are month to month. Yet, their client retention is an average of 10 years. Right there you know they’re doing things differently.
For the clients’ employees – Fit For Work is a highly interactive model. It’s a very unique medical experience. Employees don’t have to go anywhere. In fact, they’re often right beside the workers while they’re going through their daily routines. How many ATC’s, PT’s, or OT’s actually see the root cause of injuries and soreness at the source? This is a major differentiator and one of the main reasons I think Fit For Work are Troublemakers in their industry. But it’s by no means the only way they’re different.

Mind of a Troublemaker

One consistent theme I find with troublemakers is that they’re never done innovating. In fact, it seems they will never rest on their laurels.

Even with the profusion of examples above, Fit For Work are still innovating. They just launched ErgoHome™ at-home ergonomics training for more productive remote work. The ergonomic standardization of a familiar work environment is non-existent in these COVID-19 work from home times. Nagging soreness, discomfort, and a lack of productivity are the inevitable outcomes.

ErgoHome™, Fit For Work’s virtual one-on-one service, pairs remote workers with Ergonomic Specialists dedicated to assessing their environment and providing tailored, sustainable solutions. Through easy online scheduling and personalized consultations, their experts are able to interact directly with the individual.

Learn More

Learn More About Fit For Work at their website (HERE) or contact Matt directly at MattWeber@wellworkforce.com or 210.495.8788.