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?
“Safety is an attitude. How’s yours?” That tagline was one I created for one of my clients as a way to get the staff and management excited and bought into the new injury prevention system that I was assisting in design and implementation. Attitude is vitally important to success whether it’s in regards to safety, sales, marketing or performance. A company’s attitude towards employee health, wellness and safety will go a long way into attaining zero work-related injuries.
“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.
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.
All too often I hear safety professionals lament that safety is compromised for increased productivity. They tend to be dismayed by the fact that the focus of the operations managers and corporate level executives are to maximize efficiency and productivity as much as (humanly) possible. For the safety professional, the focus is on employee health and safety. It’s not the safety professionals don’t want profits and it’s not the corporate executives want injured employees, however if the corporate executives are forced to choose between safety and productivity the choice will almost alway
