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Repetitive Stress Injury Prevention Program
For a company with thousands of employees working around-the-clock in oil fields, ships, refineries and other industrial environments, the statistic was surprising. Nearly two of every five workplace injuries reported in Chevron in 1999 were sustained by people who were doing the same thing over and over: working on computers.
Such repetitive stress injuries (RSIs) can result if an employee's workstation is not set up properly, or simply by the work habits of the person. ChevronTexaco's response to the RSI hazard was to create the ongoing Repetitive Stress Injury Prevention program (RSIP), a risk-based program that focuses on early identification and prevention. The highly structured program includes awareness and training, assessments of workstations and work habits (often using a Web-based tool), behavior-based observation processes, early reporting of discomfort and rapid intervention when a potential problem is discovered. We believe that our program is among the best in industry.
So far our results are encouraging. Companywide, the number of RSIs has dropped 32 percent from 2000 to 2002. And the injuries we are having are less severe. Based on the data from our units with the highest risk for RSIs, in cases where the employee is not able to work due to an RSI, the average number of days lost per injury dropped by almost 50 percent from 2001 to 2002.
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