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)”?
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:
The last of the four common reasons for why employees don’t do what they’ve been trained to do are barriers. Think of barriers as a thick and high brick wall. There is no way for a worker to do what you’ve told them because a wall is in their way. The workers lack the equipment and tools or authority to they need to do their job as they’ve told. Barriers must be addressed and removed as soon as possible as they prevent the ability to perform the task, perform the task safety and/or take safety precautions that control their and their coworkers’ exposure to risk.
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.
It’s often tough to admit that you’re average, especially when comparative measures show your competition is better than you. This is especially true for company leaders when they compare themselves to their competitors on customer satisfaction, productivity levels and profit margins. The C-suite is frequently looking at these scores and trying to improve them in order to improve the bottom line. Is this the case when companies compare themselves on employee engagement and safety scores?
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.
If the CEO came to your office and asked, “How is effective is our ergonomics program today?” what would be your answer? Would you even be able to answer? What would your answer be based on? What metric or measure would you base it upon?
Often times we measure ergonomics and safety success based only on the numbers and costs related to worker injury. Those numbers, whether are good or bad, do matter, but they only matter for yesterday. They don’t tell you what is going on today.
How are new program ideas generated? Where do they get there start? Well, typically things start because there is a need for something. Once the need is identified, then the company has to decide how to address that need. This is often done by a person or committee that sifts through choices and determines the best one. Then is assigned to lead the program and implement the changes. There is typically a budget and a timeline attached for implementation.
How many times has your company started new programs only for them to fail within months to a couple years? How many initiatives are you able to count that have come and gone within the past 5-10 years? Does your company roll out new initiatives every year that in essence focus on the same thing, i.e. customer service, increased sales, improved safety, etc.? Does it feel like these programs are trying to reinvent the wheel over and over again?
