Injuries can be very costly to companies. Not only can they result in increased workers’ compensation insurance rates but can also cause staffing difficulties, decreased employee morale, and depending on the type and severity of the injury bring an unwanted visit by OSHA. Often times the employee who gets injured is assigned all or partial blame for the incident. You are probably very well versed in the typical reasons why s/he got hurt: s/he should have known better; s/he did have common sense; s/he didn’t use the provided equipment to do the job safely; s/he was tired and not thinking normally; s/he needed more training; s/he didn’t follow the policies and procedures; etc. Those are what I call “people issues”. However, are the people the real issue or is there something more to injuries than people?
Based upon numerous experiences I’d like to suggest that injury issues are process issues and rarely people issues. The processes involved in the task or procedure is such that it causes or greatly contributes to the risk factors for injury, i.e. people making “dumb” decisions. Let’s take a look at two examples that are based on real incidences to demonstrate this.
Example 1: Warehouse employee climbed the racking to get a product. He lost his grip and fell to floor injuring his lower back and right wrist.
- The immediate response to this employee after making sure he wasn’t severely injured could be, “what were you thinking!” Followed by “why did you go against policy and not use the ladder? After all, you’ve been trained.” The employee’s response to this was “yes, I know the policy. But it takes too long to use the ladder. You’ve told us we need to get product out the door as quickly as possible. I’m working hard and trying to be efficient.”
- This warehouse in particular had ladders for each aisle and even marked on the floor where the ladders should be stored when done using so they workers didn’t have to go hunting for them. Every employee was trained on the policy that ladders should be used to reach high items. Despite this several employees still climbed racking and the supervisor did not hand out any consequences for doing so.
- It would be logical to blame people in this case—both the employees for not using ladders and the supervisor for not enforcing the policy. However, a closer look at the policy/procedure would verify the injured worker’s claim that using ladders does slow down the order picking. The safety solution, i.e. providing ladders, does fit make picking high products safe it doesn’t do a good job of meeting the functional job requirements of picking orders quickly. My recommendation was to map the order picking process, identify areas in which picking was slow and determine solutions that would speed up the process while at the same time virtually eliminate the risk of injury. In this case, it was decided to modify the shelving height so all products were within the reach envelope of each worker. This change also required modifications to product inventory. The result was increased order picking efficiency and zero temptation to climb racking.
Example 2: Each day the linen employee pulled the linen carts and ended up with a repetitive use left rotator cuff strain.
- The immediate response to this employee after he turned in the injury report was something to the effect of “why did you continue to pull those carts. I’ve told you many times to push them or to use the battery powered cart mover. I know you’re excuses for not doing so but now look what happened to you.” The employee’s response was “I don’t like the cart mover. I feel it’s unsafe to use going down hallways with people in it. And you know why I can’t push it—the cart is 6’ tall and I’m only 5’8”.”
- This happened in a large hotel/casino complex. The linen department used exchange carts in order to eliminate the need for workers to have to fill floor stock from a cart. They simply removed the nearly exchange cart from the day before and replaced it with a fully stocked one. As stated above, the carts were 6’ high all but one employee weren’t tall enough to see over them to push the carts without having a risk of running into people or other things. The carts were made of a molded plastic, were open only on one side and didn’t have handles. The carts also were heavier and required a little more force to move compared to the carts used before the exchange cart system. Because of this the company did purchase two powered cart movers.
- It would appear to be appropriate to blame the employee for not using the powered cart mover. However, a closer look at the linen exchange cart process would reveal that the workers started exchanging the carts at 5am, which if you stay at any hotel about at the stay of when people get up and/or check out. A relatively simple solution was to change the start time and make sure it avoid the prime hours where hotel guests were about the most, i.e. 5-9am and 3-8pm. This also required changes in the workers’ work shift start and end time. In addition, the training on the use of the powered cart movers was greatly improved—instead of practicing in the relatively open linen room and hallways, an obstacle course was created with people standing on different sides of the hallway, room service carts left in the hallway, etc. This created a real life feel so the workers would be comfortable operating the mover with the cart attached.
As you can see, the above injury incidences could easily be seen as and classified as “people issues” if one doesn’t take the time to map out all of the processes which allows the “invisible become visible”, i.e. what appears to be people related is actually process related. It is easy for management to focus on people because dealing with people which although it can be difficult, is still easier and requires less time and effort compared to analyzing the process and implementing process changes. Unfortunately, people only focused solutions are bound to have limited success and questionable sustainability. Focus on the process and utilize human factors in your solutions. You’ll end up with effective and sustainable success.
By Jill Kelby, PT, CEA; President and Owner of Kelby Ergo Design.
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