Have you ever had an experience with a product or a machine in which you said to yourself, “This is a poor design”? Or, have you ever walked into a space (office, store, restaurant, etc.) find yourself saying, “Why is this here and not over there?” or “What were they thinking (when they designed this)”?
“It’s impossible for me to this because….”
“There’s no way I can do it that way”
“It’s difficult for me to do it that way because…”
“If I did it that way, ____ would happen”
If you’ve heard statements similar to these it’s probably because your employees have obstacles or barriers in their way of performing and doing things the way they’ve been trained or instructed. In this final blog series I’m going to discuss how to approach obstacles and barriers that get in the way of employees doing what they’ve been trained to do.
Continuing on with my blog series on the four common reasons why employees don’t do what they’ve been trained, I’m going to take a closer look at perception. The scenario I’m going to use as the basis for this is one which is occurring in many hospitals and long term care facilities around the country: caregivers not using safe patient handling (SPH) equipment to move patients. This has become a source of frustration for many SPH program leaders. As you will see, the lack of SPH equipment use could easily involve all 4 reasons but for this blog we’ll focus only on perception.
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:
In my previous blog I asked the question, “Why Do Employees Still Not Do What They’ve Been Trained?” It’s been my experience that they are at least four common reasons why employees don’t do what they’ve been told. The first one I want to focus on is habits. Habits are a behavior that we repeat and repeat without even thinking. For all habits, the brain-body connection is well worn in. We do it without thinking so to stop doing it requires us to think about it.
Have you ever seen an employee continue to do some “unsafe act” or not use the safety equipment provided to them just after they’ve been trained in the new policies and procedures? If you have you’re certainly not alone. Unfortunately, this is a common frustration of safety professionals everywhere. I’ve personally experienced this on more than one occasion, especially early on in my career. I’ve also had colleagues ask me if this has happened to me and what I’ve done about it.
In Part 1, I stated that successful ergonomics programs manage risk and optimize human performance and reviewed key elements of a successful program. Now that we know ergonomics is not about safety, we need to convince the C-level and operations people that ergonomics truly is a worthwhile investment.
ROI Justification Models
There review the top 3 ways that can be used to convince management to implement ergonomics programs. Each model has its own strengths and weaknesses.
Have you looked at you job description lately? How about your performance evaluation? What performance expectations or knowledge base is required? Does any of it relate to ergonomics or safety? What about everyone else who works for the same company that you do? Do any of their performance expectations or knowledge include ergonomics or safety?
