The Bottom Line Value of Ergonomics—It’s Not About Safety!
Managing Risks and Optimizing Human Performance
As an ergonomics consultant I typically am contacted by human resource or safety professionals who want to focus on ergonomics in one area or establish an ergonomics program in their facility/company. Unfortunately for them (and me), getting approval from the C- or VP-level for approval is often times a stumbling block. The primary reason that I see for this is that the proposal and business case is predicated on health and safety issues. I’d like to see that approach and sentiment changed to what ergonomics truly is—an engineering and work flow issue. Ergonomics is not a health and safety issue. The only time it becomes a health and safety issue is after you see an injury.
The best and most effective use of ergonomics occurs when it moves from being reactive to proactive to advanced approaches. As an ergonomist, I get very frustrated by companies continually staying in the reactive phase. Reactive means that we are constantly putting out fires instead of preventing them. Being proactive means managing risks rather than consequences. This consists of not introducing any new risk and controlling any incoming risk through new equipment, workspace design, workstations, product design, etc. Proactive also means continually working in conjunction with operations and quality personnel on ways to improve the efficiency and productivity of the entire operations and the employees.
Key elements to successful ergonomics programs include being efficient, effective and engrained in the culture. In addition, it is vital that ergonomics programs should:
- Utilize a systems and systems approach in embedding ergonomics into the performance expectations and culture of the facility. Ergonomics should become second nature, a habit within the company.
- Involve all aspects of an organization and the right people. I’ve seen ergonomics teams that struggle because they don’t have all of the correct people involved and lack an organizational structure for the process. Successful ergonomics truly requires top down, bottom up involvement.
- Focused on hazard (risk) management and productivity/efficiency. Ergonomics programs should identify and address the common factors that cause injury (force, posture, repetition, vibration, contact stress, low temperatures, PPE interference (i.e. glove and other protective clothing issues), etc. Ergonomics programs also need to address how to minimize wasted time, effort and motions and methods to decrease errors and defects.
- Incorporated with other initiatives and processes. Ergonomics should not be an island onto itself. It should be integrated and aligned with other processes in the facility. One key is to have ergonomics, safety, lean and process improvement all on the same team.
- Executed as a system and process. Ergonomics must follow a system and a process improvement cycle (i.e. PDCA-plan, do, check, act)
The goals are to manage risk and optimize human performance. We need to move away from managing things that already happened—react. There are many means whereby this is accomplished, including but not limited to engaging and teaming with employees, observing them and getting their input, reviewing injury trends and utilizing assessment tools.
In part 2, I’ll review the top 3 ways that can be used to convince management to implement ergonomics programs.