process improvement

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.

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

Reason #1:  Lack of a Systems and Systems Aproach 

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?

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