Inept, Lazy Employee or Unsafe, Uncomfortable Conditions?

I had a conversation a few months ago with an employee health nurse who was telling me about her frustrations with a specific employee.  (Specific names and details about the job are purposefully left out to protect identify.) He was a “repeat offender” who happened to injure himself on a regular basis.  She could count on him being in her office every 3-4 months complaining of the work and how he hurt this or that.  The injuries typically resulted in a few lost work days and/or a few days in which he was restricted in what he could do.  She went on to say this employee and his manager didn’t get along and that the manager thought he was lazy and didn’t want to do the work.  She stated the employee had received training on how to properly and safely.  “He knows better, he just doesn’t do it.”

The conversation continued in which I asked her more specifics about the employee, manager and the job.  At the end of the conversation I suggested she give each incident another look, but with a new perspective.  I told her to check her emotions and cynicism at the door and review each case with an eye towards the work itself.  Did the employee have the right “tools” to do the job?  Did the process make sense?  How else could it be done?  Is “using correct body mechanics” the only answer?  I gave her some other suggestions, my hypothesis on the true root cause and asked her to give me an update.

Well, I recently heard back from the nurse.  She went to the manager after our conversation and the two of them re-investigated the incidences and discovered that it wasn’t just the employee.  Other workers had similar injuries but didn’t report them for various reasons.  They also brainstormed on how to do the job differently which lead them to purchase power assist equipment which not only reduced the risk of injury significantly but resulted in the job being done quicker.  She said everyone-manager and employees-were very pleased with the result

The point of the story is to challenge the use of the quickest and easiest method when something goes wrong, i.e. blame the person.  The employee immediately gets labeled as the root cause and is thought of as being incompetent, lazy or trying to work the system.  Instead employers should take a step back, take the emotion out of the situation and truly investigate what happened.  Ask “Why did it occur? Or, Why does it keep occurring?”  And then continue to ask “Why” five, six, a dozen times until the true root cause is found.   More often than not the root cause of the problem doesn’t lie only with the employee.  The problem and the subsequent solution involve some aspect of “work system”, i.e. equipment, work flow, work space and/or task. 

Have you had a similar experience?  Please share.