How ergonomics and human factors can address and/or counteract employee habits?

In my last four blogs I’ve discussed four common reasons that contribute to why employees don’t do what they’ve been trained and know to do:  habits, perceptions, obstacles and barriers.  Before we can address them we obviously need to determine the root cause.  We need to know the answers to these questions:

• Why does this behavior or action occur?
• When does it occur?
• How often does it occur?
• Does it affect safety, efficiency, productivity?
• What is the effect (financial, mental, and physical) on the worker, co-workers, department, company and customers (if applicable)?
• What is the cost-benefit analysis of addressing it?

We need to know the answers to those questions to determine the best possible solutions and whether it is even worth addressing at all.

Today, I’m going to address habits.   As review, habits are behaviors that we do and repeat without even thinking.  If the habits are not the desired behaviors or actions that we want our employees to take then we need to find solutions that minimize and/or eliminate the chance of the employees from doing those habits.  In other words, we need to find a way to design out the “bad” habits and design in the “good” habits.

One example is employees lifting, pushing or pulling materials “unsafely”.  Nearly all employees receive some sort of “safe lifting” or “good body mechanics” training.  It is probably pretty safe to assume that every employee knows the basics of good body mechanics (bend knees, lift with legs, load close to body, etc.), however, how many employees actually lift that way?  Here’s a brief scenario to consider:  Warehouse workers have been trained and reminded by their supervisors to lift correctly.  3 workers injured their lower back from lifting within a 6 month time frame.  The accident investigations basically concluded the same thing—that each worker didn’t lift the boxes/pallets safely.  The workers received a verbal warning as part of their corrected action.  The primary recommendation was for them to go to back class again and post more reminders.    Another recommendation was to consider a stretching program.

So, the habit is bend over and lifting.  Why?  For most people it’s quicker and easier for them to bend over at their waist than to bend their knees and lift with their legs.  It also could be because the worker physically doesn’t have the strength of motion to lift with their legs.  Or, perhaps the worker normally did use good lifting technique but for some reason s/he was rushing or just became complacent and reverted back to the old habit.

Next we are faced with two similar but opposite questions:  1) How do we ensure that workers always lift correctly? 2) How do we take away the need to lift the box from the floor?  The first looks at trying to find a better way change the workers—their behaviors and possibly physical abilities.  In this scenario, the ultimate goal would be to increase the workers’ strength and range of motion, and instill safe lifting as a “good” habit. The second looks at trying to change the work itself, i.e. ergonomics—fit the job to the person.  In this scenario, the ultimate ergonomic goal would be to have all of the boxes between the chest and thigh height in order to eliminate the “bad” habit.  Not only that, but it most likely would speed up the process resulting in greater efficiency and productivity.

Is it possible to do this?  Maybe.  Without more information we don’t know for sure.  However, we do know that relying on training workers on good techniques and behaviors with minimal or no changes to the work environment will produce negligible results over the long term.  After all, to err is human.  “Bad” lifting is an error of sorts.  In order to eliminate the chance of an error we need to eliminate the cause of the error!

What are your experiences with habits?  How have you addressed them?