productivity

“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.

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.

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.

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?