By Debra Spamer, vice president of business development of Company Nurse, LLC
With nearly 16 million employees, the retail industry employs 10% of our nation’s workforce. A workforce with a turnover rate of over 60%.
As an employer, you understand that high turnover poses a challenge when it comes to training your employees on proper procedures—including what to do when a workplace injury or COVID-19 exposure occurs.
But by using an injury reporting and nurse triage service, you provide your workers with an easy, efficient process to get the care they need. In turn, you have happier employees and higher productivity. Here’s how nurse triage for retail employees works:
The Care Your Workers Need
Yes, even managers fall into the high-turnover rate of the retail industry. Which means you can’t depend on your managers to understand and follow your workplace injury process or COVID-19 exposure protocols on their own, let alone teach this process to other employees.
When a workplace injury or exposure occurs, your managers are left asking several questions and wondering what to do next:
Is this serious? Where should the injured worker go for treatment? Or, does the injured worker even need to seek treatment?
With nurse triage, managers no longer bear the responsibility of directing employees to care. Simply by contacting your nurse triage service, your employees can navigate workplace injuries and exposures with ease.
The triage nurse works with the injured worker to understand the severity of the injury and direct the worker to the appropriate level of care, which may simply be self-care. In fact, an overall average of 42% of injury incidents are minor enough to be addressed with self-care advice—no visit to a medical facility needed.
But, when an injury is more serious, the triage nurse will direct your employees to your organization’s preferred providers.
You no longer need to dedicate resources to train new managers on what to do or where to direct employees after an injury. Instead, expert nurses make sure your workers get the care they need.
Expert Guidance from a Nurse
Employees in the retail industry typically don’t understand medical language or jargon, nor should they. What workers need, especially after a workplace injury or COVID-19, is clarity.
And expert, caring nurses that specialize in occupational injuries can provide exactly that for your injured workers.
With the help of triage nurses, injured workers can understand the severity of their injuries, why they are being directed to a certain level of care (self-care, clinic, or ER), and, if they are directed to medical facilities, what they can do to address their injuries in the meantime.
If an injured worker sustains an injury that only requires self-care, the nurse will let the worker know what to look out for during the healing process and any signs that mean they should contact the nurse to check-in.
Injured workers can take comfort in knowing they are being guided by experts.
Improve Employee Productivity and Happiness
The absence of a retail worker, even for just a few hours, can have a major impact on workplace productivity. But when a worker has appropriate care advice and referral from a triage nurse, the worker can get the right care and get back to work quickly and easily.
The triage nurse guides the injured worker with direction to the closest, most appropriate medical facility. In addition, the nurse sends a provider alert to the medical facility before the injured worker’s arrival. This ensures the worker’s medical visit is as efficient as possible. And, when a worker addresses the injury immediately, the worker’s recovery process is improved, meaning the worker can get back to working at full-capacity faster.
And when a triage nurse can help an injured worker address an injury simply with self-care advice, the worker may not even need to leave the workplace at all — meaning no interruption to your productivity.
When you take care of employees, they notice. Which is especially impactful in the high-turnover retail industry. Having cared-for employees means having happier and more productive employees.
—
Want to learn how nurse triage can help improve the injury process of your workplace? Contact us today!