ergonomics

I’m going to continue my blog series about why employees who’ve received safety and/or ergonomics training still don’t do the things they were trained to do.  It’s been my experience that there are at least four main reasons for people not to follow through on what they’ve been taught.  In my last blog I talked about habits.  Today, I’m going to cover the second common reason:  perceptions.  Perception means the act or faculty of apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind; cognition; understanding.

Part 2 of They’ve Been Trained, So Why Do They Still Not Do (fill in the blank)?

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.

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.

Managing Risks and Optimizing Human Performance

Reason #5: Absence of Continuous Improvement—Real Time Metrics

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.

Reason #4: Lack of Ergonomics(Safety) Standards Built into Job Descriptions and/or Performance Reviews at All Levels of the Organization

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?

Reason #3:  Business Case Failure

Reason #2:  Failure to Tie Ergonomics Into the Mission and Strategic Initiatives of the Company