Brands. All organizations have them. Every product has one. Nearly every service has one. Even some people have them (think Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey). I’ve worked in some companies and some of their customer service and wellness programs have them. But rarely, if ever, do ergonomics projects have them. Why is that and why is it important?
What is ergonomics? What is human factors? How can human factors and ergonomics (HF/E) help my business?
Do you think it’s possible to eliminate work-related injuries (in your company)? Is your (company) goal to have zero work-related injuries? I frequently ask these two questions to my clients. The answers (and looks on their faces) are quite varied. There are those who immediately answer the first one by saying it’s “impossible” to have no injuries. I’ve sometimes gotten the sense that they think I’m nuts for even asking the question and thinking that it is possible. With the given response to the first question, their obvious answer to the second question is “No”.
Have you ever thought about the products you use each day and how and why you use them? Consumer products are a huge category to tackle so I’m going to focus in on an item that most of use and/or interact in some way: the car. The “never event” for a car is pretty easy to see—accidents can cause serious injury and/or death. The design of cars has significant HF/E involved in them—good and bad.
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)”?
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?
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.
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?
